Intro Character Animation for Film and Games

 

Fig.1 - Intro to Module and Animation

We started by learning the 12 principles of animation which is; Squash and stretch, Anticipation, Staging, Straight-ahead action and pose-to-pose, Follow through and overlapping action, Slow in and slow out, Arc, Secondary action, Timing, Exaggeration, Solid drawing and Appeal. Since I have already animated before, the ones that stood out for me was trimming, exaggeration and slow in and out. This is because animating seemed to be struggling with timing and movement, thus learning some of these principles helped me understand what I was doing wrong before. 

Next, was Posing a character which was interesting to look at. Before doing this I had to learn how to pose a character under a minute and being introduced to this again was fun, as it awakened my skills. As shown in Figures 1 and 2, I was able to use all the controls to pose a character although this was a hard character to pose as there was an extent on how far a character should reach. In addition, the camera and lighting were included which was already introduced last semester, however, gave me more insight on how to use them.

As shown in Figure 4, we learnt how to use Antics, timing/spacing, arcs and eases by using a square and experimenting with it. We downloaded an engine that we coded in Maya to help with spacing in our posses for the animation, thus we were able to see the difference between using and not using easing in and outs.

Concluding, I thought went well, there is not much as we were being taught the basics of Maya. I thought the posing was successful as I was able to include the "spine" and "arch," which I learned during the class. I am now confident in using camera and lighting as I struggled with those before.

Fig.2 - Posing Character

Fig.3 - Camera and Lighting

Fig.4 - Antics, timing/spacing, arcs, eases, squash and stretch