WEEK 8: Happy midterm break! Some inspiration for you

I wanted to post something inspiring for you to think about over the break.

When you do something creative, do you sit back and go, 'Well, doesn't THAT just kick a$$?! I am so incredibly talented!'.  Of course you don't. Well, no one I know does.
This is for everyone who's ever created anything they were less than thrilled with, knowing it was the best they could manage at that time. Wishing they were already better. Doubting they would ever get there, wherever 'there' is. Truth is, 'there' does not exist for most of us because we keep raising that bar just beyond our current skill level. This can lead to discouragement unless we stop once in a while and take stock of our progress.

During your break, I urge you to take a moment to look back to your earliest work. Note that what was once difficult now seems easier. That's progress.

Everything worthwhile is gained only through effort.

This piece sums up this concept so well: 

Ira Glass on Storytelling

 

Ira Glass is an American public radio personality. This audio is from his interesting series of videos on Storytelling http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loxJ3FtCJJA&feature=relmfu 
This video was made by David Shiyang Liu as part of a challenge to create something every day for 30 days. http://30daysofcreativity.com/

WEEK 7: Animation Direction 2 -- Milestone 2 critique: Puppet armature & set

This is the halfway-critique for your puppet armatures and sets, as well as a continued work period.

Puppet maker extraordinaire, Kathy Shultz, will be joining us again starting from 11 a.m!

The ongoing sharing of ideas, supplies, and the results of tests have been invaluable so far..

Milestone 3: Puppet, basic set completed
Assigned: 23/02/12
Due: 08/03/12 In class% of final grade: 20%

Puppet including costume, special features such as eye direction & blinks worked out, pose-ability, some testing completed. Set built and decorated. System for holding down character and set.

Rubric:
Exemplary: Puppet and set completed to a high level of polish, extensive testing or planning done.
Excellent: Puppet and set complete and some testing done.
Acceptable: Puppet and set complete with only minor details remaining.
Not Acceptable: Puppet and set not yet complete. Quite far behind schedule.

WEEK 7: Character Acting 2: Attack, continued!!

Today is a work period to go over the results of your Run Animation assignment and do a WIP check of your Attack assignment. 






We'll also study a few examples of 'snappy' animation from Pixar and Warner Brothers and analyze what makes the timing so punchy and slick. 

WEEK 7: Modeling and Animation II: Action analysis, continued

Today is a work period to go over the results of your Luxo Jump assignment and do a WIP check of your Action Analysis assignment.

It's halfway through the term already! I have a couple of video clips to show you that will help you see whether you can picture yourself as an animator, or as anything but!

WEEK 6: Animation Direction 2 -- Work period for sets and armatures

Milestone 2: Puppet armature, basic set started
Assigned: 09/02/12
Due: 23/02/12 In class
% of final grade: 10%

Rubric:
Exemplary: Progress made on both puppet(s) and set ahead of schedule and represents more than half the work involved including r&d and sourcing supplies.
Excellent:  Puppet(s) and sets about half complete and on schedule
Acceptable: Puppet(s) and sets started, most materials sourced, not too far behind schedule.
Not Acceptable: Puppet(s) and sets behind schedule. Materials not fully sourced.

WEEK 6: Character Acting 2: Attack, continued!!

that's some anticipation right there!

Assignment 3: Attack
Assigned: 08/02/12
Due: 05/03/12
% of final grade: 20%

Tranisition from the walk and run cycles into an 'attack'. Your file should include the walk cycle and the transition to the run. Include a transition into the attack that shows anticipation, and be sure to complete the action with a believeable follow through.  If possibly, the attack should also transition back into the run or the walk.

Use the pre-built humanoid skeleton or your own rig.

Rubric:
Exemplary: Clear personality and attitude, strong apparent weight, fluid motion with a strong grasp of all animation principles. Action transitions flawlessly from the walk or run and includes a clear anticipation and follow through.
Excellent: Apparent personality, weight and almost entirely fluid motion with a good grasp of nearly all animation principles. Action transitions smoothly from the walk or run and includes an anticipation and follow through.
Acceptable: Some personality and weight. Motion is mostly fluid with minor errors or missing animation principles. Action transitions reasonably smoothly from walk or run with some attempt at anticipation and follow through.
Not Acceptable: Attack not convincingly heavy or not fluid with quite a few glitches or missing animation principles. Transition not smooth or with errors such as missing anticipation or follow through.

Equal weight will be given to:
Attitude/Personality, Weight, Pacing/Timing, Overlapping Actions/Secondary Motion

Please submit files by FTP.

Please hand in 2 files, your playblast and your maya fil.
You can hand in videos in any standard format except .wmv.
Ex: .mov, .avi, .mp4,
Naming convention:
tdonovan_attack_000.ma
tdonovan_attack_000.avi

Include any referenced files. Please watch your naming conventions. No caps, extra characters or spaces. Feel free to number the files up to 999 as you like. It will help differentiate the files should you need to resubmit.

Please hand in files via ftp.

WEEK 6: Modeling and Animation II: Action analysis

"Action analysis" in animation often means working from live action reference

The next level of applying the Principles of Animation is the most elusive: adding personality to our characters. Staging, solid posing and appeal will come into play even more in this last 3D animation assignment for this course.

student examples of action analysis

You'll be taking a few weeks to find, analyze and animate a short live action clip of your choice or creation.


Assignment 3
Luxo Lamp: Action Analysis
Assigned: 15/02/12
Due: 05/03/12

Find a live action clip no longer than 10 seconds. Download it using 'Save Vid' or another downloading tool (see sidebar links).  Analyze it frame by frame looking for keys, breakdowns, arcs, timing, and any other noteworthy details that make the clip interesting to you.  Take notes on paper or draw over stills. You can also import the clip into Maya to rotoscope parts of the action.

Animating  Luxo doing the same action using any other primitives you need to sell this piece. Zero marks are given for modeling, lighting, or texturing. This is entirely an animation assignment. The camera angles do not have to match the live action reference but make sure they're flattering to your action.

As with the jump, be sure to make the lamp look heavy by showing the effort required to move that weight. Now's your chance to add a little character and personality to your lamp.

The final output should be 3 files: your reference, your playblast, and your maya file.
Try to optimize your videos so they are as small as possible while maintaining image quality.
I will accept .avi's, .mov's, .mp4's.  Please no .wmv's.

Files should be named as follows:
tdonovan_luxo_vid_ref.avi
tdonovan_luxo_action_000.avi
tdonovan_luxo_action_000.ma

The file number (000) should be whatever version of the file you hand in. You can hand in any version up to 999. This could come in handy if you need to resubmit. You can simply send me the new file with the new version number. Careful with your file naming. No caps. No extra spaces. No extra descriptors.

Rubric:
Exemplary: Advanced grasp of animation principles evident. Luxo has unmistakable weight, clear, snappy timing, convincing overlapping action.  Camera angles should frame action so that it is clearly staged for maximum readability with strong sillhouettes. Luxo has a clear personality and appeal.
Excellent: Strong grasp of most of the animation principles with few mistakes. Luxo has consistent weight, good timing, and good use of overlapping action. Camera angles frame the action well. Luxo has some personality and appeal.
Acceptable: Reasonably executed animation utilizing most of the animation principles with some minor mistakes. Luxo has mostly consistent weight, timing and overlapping action. Action is staged reasonably well. Luxo has a somewhat clear personality.
Not Acceptable: Lack of evident understanding of the animation principles with several mistakes. Luxo not heavy or smoothly-timed with little to no overlapping action. Camera doesn't frame the action well. Luxo doesn't appear to have any personality.

Assignments to be handed in via FTP.

WEEK 5: Animation Direction 2 -- Milestone 1: In-class critique, continued, plus work period for sets and armatures

We'll wrap up the Milestone 1 critiques -- bravo on the work I've seen so far!  Looks very well-organized and jammed with creative ideas.  Your input is invaluable so please help each other make the most of this very important step in the production process.

This is our first work period to focus on set and armature building. We can also have a look at the equipment that's available and start testing cameras. I'll see if Kathy can pop by... :o)

If we have time I'll show you the testing software we're hoping to use and the backup plan as well.

WEEK 5: Character Acting 2: Attack!!

Wrapping up your rigs, walks, and runs -- I'll spend time going over your marks for the first assignment and answer any questions you may have about the work you've done so far.

Next up: attacks!  This is our final assignment before the break.  Making the most of the fight choreography training you had in Term 1, come up with a fight movement or short sequence that flows logically and fluidly from your cycle animation.

You can use weapons if you like. I mean your characters can.

We'll look at a couple of examples of great fight sequences and analyse what makes them so punchy and fun to watch.

WEEK 5: Modeling and Animation II: Luxo, Continued

We've covered a lot of the Principles of Animation so far, but there's still a lot to cover in terms of secondary & overlapping action. The Luxo character has only its head and base to drag and settle, so it's important to use them well to show gravity's effects. Controlling secondary action takes practice. Too much secondary makes the characters look too rubbery. Not enough, and they look like robotic.

We looked at some clips from the masters of secondary action -- Disney, Bluth, and Keane and studied how it gives their work such nice flow and weight.

"Secret of Nimh" by Don Bluth, master of secondary action  

We studied photographic reference of other people jumping. 

Now it's your turn to create some video reference for yourself. We'll set up cameras and tripods and shoot some footage to use to try rotoscoping -- a process I eyed with suspicion until I discovered what a time-saver it can be.

Creating Image Planes From Video Reference 

Click here to see one of you as a lamp. 

It's relatively easy to bring  footage into your animation files. You can easily follow the frame-by-frame reference, ie, rotoscope, but you'll quickly see that with just a little exaggeration you can make your animation even better, heavier, and snappier than the live action footage.

Check out the video to see how I turned one of my students into a lamp...

Here are the instructions on how to view an image sequence in your viewport:

-Find and trim the reference video you want and save it. 

-Create a jpg image sequence for it at 24 fps, aiming for the lowest tolerable quality setting (I got 11 kb/fr)

You can do this easily in QuickTimePro. 

You can also use Premiere, Final Cut Pro, AfterEffects, etc.

In Premiere: -->File | Export | Media. Select TIFF as the format, and set source range to Entire Clip.

In Maya:

-create a new camera from the main menu:  Create --> Camera

-in the viewport, look through your new camera: Panels --> Perspective --> Camera 1 (or whatever you named your camera)

-in the viewport, create an image plane: View --> Image Plane --> Import Image, click on the first frame of your image sequence.

-View --> Image Plane --> Image Plane Attributes --> Select "Use Image Sequence"
- in Image Plane Attributes, select the visibility Display --> In all views
Animate through the perspective window or the camera if you like

Finish your Luxo Jump this week! When the basics are working, polish secondary, overlap, drag, settle, and moving holds. If you have extra time, try adding in a little personality. Upload your work in progress to your blog along with video or photographic reference.