Hello to everyone reading this. My name is Hriday Kamath V. and we are back with another blog. However this time we will be going through the process of making an animation clip. One of my fondest memories of watching animated movies or TV shows was the curiosity of knowing how they were made and this project gives me the opportunity to dive deep into the process of making an animation clip of my own.
OBJECTIVE : To document the process of studying animation and producing a 10 sec animation clip using the knowledge along the process.
09-02-2024
This first update is almost 3 weeks from the time our new semester classes have started. Thus I shall do my best to recap whatever I was able to do in these 3 weeks and get you guys up to speed.
We started off with the most basic fundamentals of animation which are the 12 Principles of Animation.
These are the principles that encompass all of animation, from the animation of your favourite Disney character
to your favourite villain in anime they all come alive thanks to these 12 principles. It is now my duty
to remember these while I animate.
Though I'm familiar with a few of them, I am very curious about Appeal, Anticipation and Timing.
These are the ones I have struggled in the past, and will be looking to better understand them through this module.
And we begin with a bouncing ball. Well, bouncing a ball off a wall to be more precise.
A great way to test out the 12 principles.
While I tried using most of the principles, I did feel it was not how I would like it to be.
I then took it to be reviewed by our Professor, and these were a few things I took away from that review.
Work on the anticipation in the beginning, when the ball is gathering the energy.
The spacing between frames needs more work
I should work a little more on ease in and ease out.
I also tried an exercise which helps us understand overlapping and follow through better. It was to animate
pendulum.
For my first self study session, I thought it would be beneficial for me to start with some Solid Posing exercises of my own. I went to Pinterest to find a few poses and the following are a few screen grabs of the process.
The two rigs I used for this are Beefy and Bulky. Very simple rigs with simple controls. The idea behind this exercise was to pose the rig as accurately to the reference as possible. I was pleased with how they turned out.
In the next class session, we were introduced to a new application called SYNCSKETCH, which helps you watch any video frame by frame. Why is this important ? I'm glad you asked. Since animation is done frame by frame, sync sketch helps an upcoming animator to review his favourite animated clip frame by frame and see the hidden details that help make an animated scene.
We had the opportunity to review an animated clip from JULES MUROT, who had animated an animation wielding a sword.
It is very insightful to see certain decisions to make the animation real, but adding the 12 principles to make it not too real. These were the points I took from this class session.
Solid posing is very essential as it anchors the whole animation
Use of Arcs make the animation flow through space
The use of stretch and squash was done very well to show the effort the character is putting in to wield the sword.
If timing and spacing is done properly, they can enhance the animation an make it very dramatic.
The other exercise we had was to re-pose a character. This was done to learn about Line of Action. If we are doing any activity and someone was to draw a line from your head to feet, you would see a line of action. And the line of action is never straight because we always will favour one of our sides even if we are just standing. Understanding gravity is always very important in order to get your poses right.
One other thing talked during the class was having clear silhouettes. It means when put in a pose and the lights are taken off, the pose should still be able to provide the maximum information of what the pose is trying to convey. Silhouettes are something I need to understand better as well. I have become very conscious of it in the next exercise as well even though they are just hands.
The latest class session we had, we were asked to work on hands. As someone who draws a lot, I had heard that there are 3 things people notice when they see your art for the first time. The face, the hands, and the feet. And in 3d animation hands are usually something that can add a lot more to a character. They can be very expressive when they are done right.
We were given a rig and a few reference images to work with.
One of the self study sessions I went with was creating expressions along with the poses. It was a study where I had to match the facial expressions with the body language to convey the emotion the character was going through. I enjoyed this process as posing is becoming one of my favourite things to practice. And complimenting them with facial expressions, which is quite challenging as I was trying not to go with cliché body language with facial expressions. I tried to push my ideas and come up with something I don't normally do in terms of posing.
I did then have a review session with my Professor regarding this practice and these were the key points I took away from the review.
I need to work on my line of action, which has been one of the areas I tend to struggle with in sketching as well.
Try to exaggerate the poses a little more. Find areas where you are able to push the pose and not compromise the expression completely
There were good arcs in the body which helped the pose feel natural.
26-02-2024
It's almost been two weeks since the last update. I am still figuring out ways to balance between two different modules. Plus making sure I have things to update on my blog as well. I sometimes feel like an influencer, trying to get a piece of content to share with you guys.
In the class 2 weeks ago, we went through a reference based animation workshop. We had a theory class in the first half, and these were the points that were discussed.
Using a reference is not cheating. However it is only a base that we must work up from.
References have been used since the time of classic Disney movies, they used to film people in their studios and gain information to use in their animation.
It is important to have a few variations of a reference as it helps see a particular scene in multiple different ways. This way we have a lot of sources to derive our final animation from.
I learnt that an animation can have two different speeds. They can be 1's or 2 's or even 3's. Simply put, a character in the animation can be moving 2 similar frames per second while the environment around the character may be moving at 1 frame per second. To make the movement heavier or feel powerful, we can even push the animation for 3 frames per second.
In last week's class, we had to learn and practice the walk and run cycle. As this is one of the deliverables for the modules, I was keen on making sure I did my best in understanding the ways to a good walk or run cycle.
We started off the session with a lecture and a live demonstration, we got to work on working on a 'Vanilla' walk cycle. Why vanilla you ask? It's just the most basic form of walk animation possible. They are just a set of important poses put together to make a walk cycle. These are generic and have no personality.
I tried it once with limited knowledge of the walk cycle. I did not refer to the support material in its entirety, however there were a few instances where I did have to refer to the material.
I went to do this a few times and for the latest test, I made sure I watched the full support material, this helped me see the mistakes I made when I did not refer to the material, helped me to see tweaks and things I could do better.
Later in the week I took a challenge and worked on a run cycle. I seem to be a little better with the run cycle than the walk cycle. I only attribute it to the multiple times I worked on the walk cycle. They are very similar in how they are done.
02-03-2023
Last week we were told to read a certain book which is considered one of the best books if you want to learn animation. I came across the book when I was doing my Under graduation. Unfortunately I never had the opportunity to feel a physical copy of this book. In the beginning of the Masters course here in Kingston, we were told that this book would be available in the library. I did not read it in the first semester as there was nothing done in connection to that, that was being taught or which could be used as part of research for the research.
This semester had a lot of animation involved and what a perfect opportunity to read this book. It's called the ' Animator's Survival Kit '. I was excited to see it in the library. I grabbed a copy and sat down. Our Professor had mentioned checking out the walk, run cycle section of the book, as it is what we will be focusing on in the module this time.
All I can say is it is very very impressive. The amount of detail it goes into describing each and every little thing involved in the walk run cycle is amazing. It's the amount of information you can get out of just changing the timing and spacing of the normal human walk is what blew my mind. The ways you can push your character to become more of a classic animation style character is a wonderful read. Breaking bones in an effective way of your character showed the effective sides of exaggerating the limit and beyond can bring out something very unique in your character walk or run.
This pose was particularly difficult because of the limitations of the rig mixed with the complexity of the pose.
I did my best to replicate it. I went as far as to break conventional rules of rotating the controls and
starting moving the controls to make it less painful to look at especially in the shoulders.
The pose here was a great exercise to learn to understand balance with the body.
In the afternoon session we were asked to pair up and use an audio clip from the ones provided. I paired up with Pollobi, a colleague of mine, and we had about an hour to come up with a storyboard, choose characters, block the shots and try to animate. A lot to be done in an hour so doing the maximum was the aim.
This is the storyboard my partner came up with. I was happy with it as it had all the necessary shots
required to show a conversation between the two characters. I did discuss
whether we have an establishing shot or have it start in the middle of the animation.
With the time left I started to set up the scene. Brought up the character rigs. They had a few issues
which I was able to solve. I then started blocking the shots with a few changes made.
Flipped the position of the characters and added a gift box in the scene.
The audio clip was about returning a favour and our take was to have two very mean looking characters turn up to a birthday party.
17 - 03 - 2024
In this week's class, it was all about lip sync and a bit of facial expressions to compliment the dialogue. We began the lecture talking about lip movement and the sounds that they create.
These are the key points I took from the lecture and are as follows :
Many of the alphabets have a similar mouth shape and sound, therefore we can use that in making lip sync a bit simpler while animating.
It is important that these lip shapes stay for at least 2 or 3 frames in the animation for the audience to register the shape with the sound.
We must ensure we are not just working on lips for the sync to work. Our entire body is involved in an expression and each movement is linked throughout the body. A great book to help us understand that is 'Anatomy of Facial Expression' by Uldis Zarins.
We then moved to working with a robot. This was to help us work on the lip sync as we had just moved the part which looks like the lower part of a human jaw. While watching the process video I noticed there was a bit of a performance along with the dialogue provided. I took it as a challenge to create a small act for that dialogue like the one shown in the video. I worked on the animation along with lip sync and our professor had a look and these were his feedback points :
The body movement was a little too much. It was a little distracting from the lip sync.
The character has limited jaw movement when he gets to the word 'have' in the dialogue.
The timing and spacing of the animation could also be improved a little further
We have 2 more weeks of classes left and I have started working on the module submissions which I will update very soon.
24 - 03 - 2024
This was one of my favourite classes of the semester so far. One of the students in our class suggested this exercise in the feedback forms, where we were given a bunch of reference videos, choose one and replicate it using the 3d models provided to us. We can either be in teams of 2 or do it solo.
To kick off the animation, I made a simple MindMap to break the tasks into time periods. These are not set in stone, however this is like a foundation to help build on. (insert map)
I then took the reference video to SyncSketch, scrubbed through the video and marked the solid poses in the video.
The reference video had four different angles. Imported it into Premiere Pro, cut the clips, scaled them down and fit them into a single frame.
Once I rendered the video, brought them to Maya, started with the solid poses, made sure they look as good as possible.
With the solid poses completed, added more solid poses to build on the animation.
While working on these solid poses, I enable an option called 'Enabled Stepped preview'. Maya predicts the animation between the frames and most of the time they are not the very best with the predictions. Enabling this option stops these in between animations created by Maya which gives me more control over the animation.
With the poses done, I turn the option off and watch the animation play out.
You then start cleaning the animation, trying to make sure there are not any floating animations, adding more frames in between to better timing and working on spacing.
18 - 04 - 2024
For the module project, I decided to do a sneak walk cycle with a Frankenstein character. One of the requirements was that it be 24 fps with either 1s or 2s.
After finding a reference picture for the walk, I decided to have a video reference as well. One of them was from TIM STRAIN (https://youtu.be/xyA6LR2Els4?si=B3oJIBMWLUOVxMtE)
A few points I took away from the video
The balance of the body and the line of action when the front foot touches the ground.
The slow hand movement forms an arc as it comes from top to bottom when in front of the character.
The toe to heel animation of the foot to make it look like the character is really trying not to make any noise while walking.
Stepped preview of the walk
I was curious about understanding Blocking Plus as I had failed to implement it properly during one of the workshops in class. A 3 part video series from AnimSchool helped me understand what blocking plus meant.
It is more about spacing than timing.
More solid poses that strengthen the main poses will make the animation move towards the desired outcome, even before going into polishing it.
The next set of animations I started working on was a game pack animation set which included the character being idle, jump, walk or run and dodge or dive. This animation was to be done with 30fps and 1s.
25 - 04 - 2024
For the character, I chose a game ready rig by Marc With K (https://marcwithk.gumroad.com/), which is an urban warrior.
As the animations were based of how the character will be, I chose to have the warrior be someone who doesn't take things too seriously, just wants to get it done at the end of the day.
For the run animation, I chose a few clips from an Indian actor, Akshay Kumar, who has a very interesting way of running from trouble in his comedy movies. It is a very tensed and there is a sense of urgency on his face to get away from trouble.
In syncsketch, studying the run of Akshay Kumar, where the body stays predominantly still, however the arms swing widely and makes it comical.
For the jump animation, I chose to reference an athlete doing a jump in a competition of how high you can jump. I did refer to this video from THE OREGONIAN (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgkCxnSHV7w) for the following reasons : :
I wanted my character to have a powerful launch off the ground, therefore an athlete was a great reference to follow.
The poses before jumping were important to show the power and weight.
The other video I referred to was from DOUGLAS HOFFENSETZ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLe_VVQBaXs), which I used to study the landing part of the jump.
Though it was a small jump, the landing made it look like he took a lot of effort to land the jump.
The profile view helps in understanding line of action and gets me to better position the arcs during the jump.
Working with the curves in the graph editor. It is important to have good looking curves
to help in making the actions seamless.
02 - 05 - 2024
For the Dodge Animation, I was inspired by a clip from Avengers Infinity War (https://youtu.be/mRIloF1ozOk?si=bnkDQe3TKpe61dJa) , the part where we see the return of captain America, where he catches a projectile thrown at him. I wanted to recreate that, however, instead of catching something, the character we just perform a dodging action.
I also used a video from QWERTNIKOL (https://youtu.be/LIZ6PUT-KlA?si=wSzLbhC3KG96OIB6), which had a bunch of animations circled around dodging.
To better understand the animation, I also performed the animation according to what I had envisioned.
Performance Clip
I used syncsketch to study the line of action, frame by frame.
For the Idle animation, I wasn't sure at first on what I would want. I then referred these videos from BOMBASTIC CLIPS (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okGlHfYI-PA) and idle character animations from Street fighter by KALABELAI GAMING (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsVHQafFGFs). I noticed they had an animation based on their appearance and personality.
I then processed the Idle animation I envisioned for the character.
Performance Clip
The idea behind the idle animation was the warrior being a little impatient with the player and mocking the player by looking at his wrist as to imply the time being taken by the player is too much of a hassle for the character.
And that was how I came up with the gameplay pack animations for the Urban Warrior Character.
This is the final output for both the animation module requirements.
Critique and Conclusion
A self critique can help in recounting and understanding the entire process, looking back and realising the mistakes and things we can work on for future projects. The workshops were definitely something I enjoyed during the module. I made sure I participated in them to my best abilities.
In terms of the project, I have very mixed feelings about it. I chose to prioritize my other module project more than this one as that was new software, and I was confident in my abilities to animate. Unfortunately, I may have overestimated the workload, I did not properly plan it out.
My plan was to do most of the work in the beginning of the module, finish the other module project and then jump back on this with less than 2 weeks to submit. I believed I was in control until I was not. Though I enjoyed some parts of the game pack animations, like the blocking, the posing, and me trying to film myself doing the actions, I never truly enjoyed the whole process which has definitely shown in the final output.
In conclusion, I am not entirely happy with how I dealt with the process, I still have a lot of things to look back and understand where I was wrong and try not make such mistakes again.
References
Fig 1 - Dermot (2018). Preston Blair Deciphered. [online] www.angryanimator.com.
Available at : https://www.angryanimator.com/word/2018/03/20/preston-blair-deciphered/
TIM STRAIN (2012). Sneaky Walk Reference. [online] www.youtube.com.
Available at : (https://youtu.be/xyA6LR2Els4?si=B3oJIBMWLUOVxMtE)
AnimSchool (2019). Blocking Plus Workflow Demo - Part 1 (Timing). [online] www.youtube.com. Available at : (https://youtu.be/R44I0pkX8MI?si=tnkBM7A45OYLcSOt)
AnimSchool (2019). Blocking Plus Workflow Demo - Part 2 (Arcs). [online] www.youtube.com. Available at : (https://youtu.be/HR19JVDmQCg?si=wNoTOT0uaAjob1Nj)
AnimSchool (2019). Blocking Plus Workflow Demo - Part 3 (Breakdowns). [online] www.youtube.com. Available at : (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfEltk2Sfe8)
Marc With K (2022). Urban Warrior - Free Game Ready Rig. [online] www.gumroad.com.
Available at : (https://marcwithk.gumroad.com/)
THE OREGONIAN (2015). Watch Josh Imatorbhebhe 47.1 inch vertical jump. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at : (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgkCxnSHV7w)
DOUGLAS HOFFENSETZ (2018). Jump Reference - Chris Jump, 24fps. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at : (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLe_VVQBaXs)
QWERTNIKOL (2023). Dodge Animations / UE Marketplace / Preview. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at : (https://youtu.be/LIZ6PUT-KlA?si=99sIkba-UAE0a0jv)
BOMBASTIC CLIPS (2023). Jedi Survivor - All Idle Animations. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at : (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okGlHfYI-PA)
KALABELAI GAMAING (2023). Street Fighter 6 - All Characters Idle Animation. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at : (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsVHQafFGFs)
BestScene (2023). Steve Rogers Entry Scene - Avengers : Infinity War (2018 ) Movie Clip. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at : (https://youtu.be/mRIloF1ozOk?si=bnkDQe3TKpe61dJa)
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