Week 4 - Reference Analysis

Fig.1 - Using Squash and Stretch

In today's lesson, we started by posing a character using a reference to express their emotions. I chose to use the model Jackie to represent her being frightened. I started by having a neutral pose for the character. To create more poses further, a storyboard was created in my mind as I was thinking of the scenario. I started the scene by making the character wave at an unknown thing that moves past her and frightens her. However, during posing, I decided to use Maya Rudolph's facial expression as shock and disgust. Whilst posing we were shown a video of a ninja turtle and how they used three steps to create a short scenario. Inspired by other videos shown as Analysis, I decided to go for an extreme pose in the middle by using squash and stretch. As shown in fig.1, Jackie's arms and head was pulled further away for exaggeration and more motion.

After completing the pose and play blasting (shown in fig.2), I was able to see the timing correctly. My challenge was to animate a character understanding real-time in Maya as it is different when exporting. Looking through the scene, I have to work more on timing and understanding real-time. I could have improved the animation by bringing the keyframes closer together for a faster and clean reaction. Overall, in my opinion, I should work more on understanding timing.

Fig.2 - Scared/ Disgusted Jump

Fig.3 - Neutral pose

Fig.3 - Scared

Fig.4 - Disgusted