WEEK 1: Animation Direction 2 -- Stop Motion!

Things are about to get very hands-on in the Octagon.
Stop motion, people! Pixilation, claymation, puppet animation -- anything that can be moved is fair game in stop motion.

Stop-motion is the granddaddy of all animation dating back as far as 1825 with the invention of a simple gadget called a 'Thaumatrope' - a simple spinning disk with images on both sides, such as the famous bird & cage example. When spun quickly the images seemed to blend together -- a phenomenon called, "persistence of vision".
Click here to see this in action.

Just think how exciting your life could have been with one of these babies

It progressed through the centuries into the multi-faceted medium it is today. Stop motion shares elements of live action, traditional and even CG animation. Like live action, you need to create sets, lights and real objects or puppets to animate. Like traditional animation you need a sense of timing and a means of planning and tracking your animation. Like CG you'll be manipulating jointed characters frame by frame. You can easily transfer your CG animation skills stop motion, and the same is true in reverse.

Phil Tippett making history on The Empire Strikes Back

We'll have a look at a sampling of various under-the-camera animation techniques, take a virtual tour of Aardman animation, and try out a bunch of simple frame-by-frame animation styles.

Today we'll start planning the major project for the term.

WEEK 1: Character Acting 2 -- Blended Game Cycles: Walks & Runs

Welcome back!

We're combining all your hard work and analysis from last term to create some great game cycles for your reel.

First up - revisiting walks.  Walk cycles again? Oh yes.. you can never get enough walk cycles. You've learned a lot since last year. Trust me. I'll show you last year's walks so you can get some perspective.

This time around the walk needs to transition smoothly into two more cycles -- the run and the attack.  All 3 cycles should cycle independently and blend seamlessly.  If you get them all working smoothly, the group of cycles should look as badass at this dude's dog.

I want character walks, not just any old generic tutorial walks. You shot reference, you can shoot more.  This is where all your animation principles and study all come together. Make it yours and make it awesome.  

Use any high-end rig you like. Here's a link to my post about sample rigs:
http://tarateach.blogspot.com/2011/01/license-free-maya-rig-testing.html


We'll get started this week with some refresher concepts about cycles and animating walks in Maya.

For next week, please read the chapter on walks from page 102-163 in Richard Williams' "Animator's Survival Kit".

(The walk cycle assignment description and rubric will be posted shortly.)

WEEK 1: Modeling and Animation II -- 12 Principles of Animation

Introduction to animation starting with Animation history 101:  "the Pixar Story".

The Twelve Basic Principles of Animation first recorded by Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in their 1981 book The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation.

I highly recommend reading the lengthy and beautifully illustrated chapter on the Principles of Animation, see "The Illusion of Life" Chapter 3, from p 47.

We'll be studying the 12 Principles of Animation in detail in the coming weeks. Here's a brief overview of the 12 Principles:

1 Squash and stretch
2 Anticipation
3 Staging
4 Straight ahead action and pose to pose
5 Follow through and overlapping action
6 Slow in and slow out
7 Arcs
8 Secondary action
9 Timing
10 Exaggeration
11 Solid drawing
12 Appeal

Bouncing Balls: 
Animating a Bouncing Ball is nearly always the first animation assignment given to both 2D and 3D animation students.  This deceptively simple exercise can teach you a lot about the nuts and bolts of animation tools, but more importantly how to give believable weight and appealing timing to your animation.

Strobe photos are fantastic for showing the beautifully symmetrical parabolic arcs followed by everything that leaves the Earth... except a rocket.

tennis ball

basketball

golf ball

I have some great reference vids for you:
Sony Bravia & Nissan Qashqai ads contrasting super bouncers and bowling balls.
Also check out the video "Ball Tests" by Brendan Body (also in sidebar links -->)

Click to download Maya Ball Rig
http://game.georgebrown.ca/~tdonovan/Rigs/ballMaya.zip


I've given you both .ma and .mb files and we'll talk about the differences.

Homework!
Study "the Pixar Story" (it's up on Youtube in 9 parts) -- there will be a quiz! :oD
Start experimenting with animating some bouncing balls in Maya -- we'll go through it in more detail next week. You can use the rigs or just primitives.

So long!

Great working with all of you. I look forward to seeing many of you again after the holidays!

WEEK 14: Texturing & Shading 1: Final Assignment

Bring me your WIP -- I'll let you know where I hope you to take it for next week's hand-in.

We'll revisit is the idea of tiling textures - a number of people asked about how to apply them.  

If you have any questions please ask them now while you still have time.

WEEK 14: Character Acting 1 -- Acting for Cinematics 3: Dialogues, group scenes, continued

Last week before the final assignments are due!

We'll continue working with Ed and polish our dialogue scenes in preparation for next week's deadline.

don't argue or I'll furrow my brow even more!

WEEK 14: Animation Direction 1 - Game Cycles -- Idles, blending cycles, continued

Last week before your due date for the cycles.

As it took a little longer to get started with these cycles I'm altering the assignment as we discussed in class.
The assignment description now states, "The sequence must contain at least 3 of the following cycles, blended together into one scene."  Click here to read the full description.

We just touched on Idle Cycles last class, so I'll dig into the details a bit more. The humble idle is the Rubic's cube of cycles. How your character behaves when he's just waiting around conveys a lot of attitude. You'll need a lot of subtle control to keep a character alive. Too little movement and they'll just look dead, too much and they'll appear to be having a seizure. :o)

I must warn you that as simple as it may seem to make a character 'do nothing', it is most diabolical! With great subtlety you must add some movement to every part of the character. Nothing should bump or pop, everything should have a nice smooth arc and you should not really be able to pick out where the cycle starts and stops -- it should be a loop about 1-2 seconds long.

Greeks gave the world souvlaki
 and contrapposto

The key to idles is mastering Overlapping Action. Show how movement flows from the main muscle groups of the body out to the extremities using the 'wave principle'.

Start with a nice pose. Work in a little contrapposto if you can.

woah, that's a little too
 much contrapposto

Get the attitude working before you move on to animation. Create a slightly different pose in the middle and then some breakdowns in between. This looks not too bad, but the movement will all be happening on the same keyframes. Get into the details by offsetting the joints. All changes of direction must use lot of slow ins & outs. Use your infinity/cycle views and check for smoothly flowing curves in that Graph Editor.

WEEK 13: Animation Direction 1 - Game Cycles -- Jumps!

EVH can do it, so can you

Next cycle -- Jumps!
We'll take a look at some different styles of jumping, leaping, hopping, bounding characters and study live action for inspiration. Jumping characters exhibit principles of animation we haven't spent that much time on in our walks and runs: secondary and overlapping action, and anticipation.

Showing the effort characters take to move their own weight is paramount to creating believable animation of any style.

It's one thing to make the up and down motion read as 'heavy' and affected by gravity. It's quite another to master the mechanics of looping overlapping/secondary action with the character's arms, legs, and in some cases .. tails!

If ever the devil were in any details.. it's animating secondary on a looping action!

Your jump cycles should be usable for avoiding ground pitfalls or traveling forward.
The mechanics of the body in the jump should work well before tackling the secondary action
The secondary needs to loop smoothly as well as connect to the run.
This cycle should work from every angle, especially side view.

WEEK 13: Texturing & Shading 1: Skies

All about skies today -- typical approaches include sky boxes and domes. We'll mostly focus on domes and create one by converting a tiling panorama to a usable map.

Skies are so interesting and contribute so much to atmosphere. I'd like to get beyond simply applying a photo you found on the internet like a sticker -- we'll get into painting skies, clouds, including graphic treatments.

WEEK 13: Character Acting 1 -- Acting for Cinematics 3: Dialogues, group scenes

We'll continue working on our long shots and get ready to dive into dialogue and multi-character scenes. We'll spend a little longer on these so you have ample time to prepare them with a partner for our final class.


Here's the link to the tracks for this week:
http://soundcloud.com/taranimator/sets/dialogue-scenes/
Here's the link to the scripts again:
Click here to download all the script excerpts to study or print.

Assignment 7:  Dialogues
Assigned: November 30th
Due: December 14th
% of Final Grade: 20%
Please keep file sizes under 2MB
Filenames:
tdonovan_longshot.avi

Description:
With a partner or 2, choose one of the dialogues and deliver a compelling performance to the voice track. Record it on video using a camera or webcam.  Make sure the audio and video sync well, it's in focus, well-lit and well composed.