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KNB215-Animation performance assessment 2- Robert Tang

WALK CYCLE FOR MY CHARACTER: 

This is the walk cycle of my big character, I also included the action of him picking up a coin in the end. I liked doing the walk cycle as I felt that it really showed the weight presented the typical motion of a big character walking.

LINK TO WALK: https://vimeo.com/272493990

Week 1 Planning 

1.The Action that I have chosen for my animation is the “Swinging a Bat” motion.

 I feel like this animation can essentially help set up how a characters emotions get represented by physicality/personality and weight of the 2 characters.

You have the:

 -anticipation of the swing

- The physicality of the swing

-The follow through and after action of the swing

All of these really do establish how a character emotions are shown from just one action “Swinging a bat”.

child swings bat

WEEK 2

CHARACTER DESCRIPTIONS:

Character 1: YOUNG TEENAGE BOY

1. How old are they? 16

 2. What is their weight? Light

3. What are their main personality traits? Shy,nervous,afraid

4. Are they outgoing/quiet? Quiet

5. Are they strong/weak? Weak

6. What motivates them? Trying to get a grip on courage

7. What is there emotional state of mind? Frail,scared

Character 2: HEAVY FATHER

1. How old are they? 40′s

2. What is their weight? Heavy

 3. What are their main personality traits? Confident,happy.flamboyant,boastful

 4. Are they outgoing/quiet?Outgoing

 5. Are they strong/weak? Strong

 6. What motivates them? To be a good father

7. What is there emotional state of mind?  Unaware,happy,Cynical,Over Confident

STORY BEATS:

1. YOUNG BOY:

1. Boy is preparing to swing a baseball bat 

2. He initially handles the bat to get a feel for its weight and almost falls over doing so

3. As he begins to get into position his stance he gets extremely nervous and legs are in wrong position as the are more closer together displaying nervousness.

4. Holds the bat closer to his head as his stance is all wrong, he is prepared to hit the ball.

5. Swings the bat and hits the ball only to fall over in the end after failing to hit the ball.

2. HEAVY FATHER:

1.Man sighs as he holds the bat behind his head with one hand looking confident

2. He then tests the ground as he hits the ground with his bat twice

3. Man then gets into position with both feet positioned correctly but his stomach gets in the way of his stance.

4. Anticipating the ball coming he slightly moves his body and baseball bat

5.Swings the bat and hits the ball successfully,

6. Fist pumps then breaks his back doing so in the process and falls over.

CONCEPT DESIGNS OF THE CHARACTERS: 

TEENAGE BOY AND HEAVY MAN

REFERENCES

Hitting a ball than falling over

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lx_zLBqMUy_FwWalsb1Lm1QRqX5sZdIZ

Regular baseball hit

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1E4517k135T0hwnUDQMfZKDkNqRhkJ68E

BLOCKING PASSES FOR MY 2 CHARACTERS

I ended up  using the 2 reference videos to dictate on how my final motion would end up looking like for both my characters. 

For my small character I made him fall over himself in the end after swinging the supposed heavy bat 

For my Heavy character I made him much more confident 

blocking pass for my heavy character

https://vimeo.com/272086769

 blocking pass for my small character

part 1: https://vimeo.com/272511248

part 2: https://vimeo.com/272087270

FINAL POLISHED VERSIONS OF ANIMATION

As you can probably see that they are a bit longer than intended but that is because I wanted to add extra expression to each of my characters and examining how they act in regards to each of their actions of the baseball swing.

Heavy character is seen as confident because of his physique and intends to hit the baseball very hard and land a home run.

Heavy character:

 https://drive.google.com/open?id=1PqyV9IxJ0-Dom8EXx6d6xcIDOV_cRWKc

Small character:

 https://drive.google.com/open?id=158NFmWmD0Vdaf-EU77olfDYluD0W7mZB

Light character is quite nervous while trying to get a feel of the bat as he feels as though the bat itself outweighs him.

REFLECTION:

For me the final outcomes of the proposed assessment was good enough for me, I worked quite hard on it however I do still feel as though there are some elements missing from them. I wanted to really exaggerate some of the motion displayed and feel that I didn’t properly showcase it in my final versions. I also feel that I could’ve displayed a more telling emotion of the characters be doing so.

 But I guess I did try to with the extra poses that I added for them and the fact that the small character falling over in the end did tell to me that of a character that continues to struggle with his poor strength. 

I do want to admit though that I wanted to add more emphasis onto the baseball swing than what is shown.

The end

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KNB-215 ANIMATION PERFORMANCE- JOURNAL

This journal is designed to keep track of all my animations that I have attempted throughout the unit. I will present images along with the animation and older versions along with it. This journal is meant to represent my process and the journey of planning myself to make my animation look better

MAYA ESSENTIALS CERTIFICATE: 

WEEK 1

 Ball bounce exercise:

 Even though presented as an easy exercise, I feel as though I have learnt a lot about the ideas of timing and spacing in regards to the Timing and Spacing, I do know that my spacing was a little off but eventually I did try several times over again.

This is an image of how i decidedly planned my ball bounce, initially it stays at the top then falls faster in the middle requiring less frames which then becomes more slowly again when touching the ground.

Here is a blocking of my ball bounce

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nKAvBHMl8iKuUpZT-BGt38X8BpvwW-ga

BALL BOUNCE ANIMATION:

 https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Pjvb7dfTeQMkBIuF9hT5j5-zyK0FUkt4

3 DIFFERENT WEIGHTED BALL BOUNCES:

Here is my take on the sloped ball bounces that I’ve done, I’ve taken into consideration the natural weight of each object and aligned them to objects that I generally would consider in real life to be light, heavy and medium:

The weights I tested were basically:

-Lightweight (small bouncing ball)

-Midweight(volleyball)

-Heavyweight- (bowling ball)

HEAVY BALL BOUNCE Animation Reflection:Sloped ball bounces: The sloped ball bounces were relatively simple to do in regards to testing the weight of all the balls itself. I just tried to assemble the weight of the balls itself and how many bounces they would generally take to fall down the slope as well as the direction of the bounces. I took into account the spacing between the bounces and how they would generally become more lower as they progress. The weights I tested were basically:

-Lightweigh (small bouncing ball): 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1VcDhJQtFUPHKTxUopfRNaKmg3SN7dxSy

-Midweight(volleyball):

 https://drive.google.com/open?id=16pnYWeo0x4gQvO9hNVStfWdmEfsEYlF-

Heavyweight- (bowling ball):

 https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XsadPf8_TC9QUt3r5XVMmbwHMnpKw_cR

BALL BOUNCES ANIMATION:

What I’ve learnt

 I found that my resistance to starting over again from scratch has been quite strong and is honestly something that I really need to resolve. I often find myself just trying to fix a project that seems already broken and that my methods of fixing it is trying to be creative in finding more ways that eventually create more problems such as placing in more frames that obstruct the workflow animation itself.

WEEK 2

Animation reflection

Pendulum Swing: For me the pendulum swing test was quite fun, I felt that the motions of the actual pendulum helped me considerably with understanding the arcs in animation and how to give off a building up of momentum in regards to the spacing/speed of the animation. This exercise really did bring out the more difficult part about animating compared to the ball bounce, I had to adjust by using more principles than the previous and apply them to the work.

Follow through/overlapping action: I made sure just like the tutorial was explained to start with the bigger actions first then move onto the smaller ones.

1.Pendulum move across>

2.smaller swing movements>

3.End of pendulum

FIRST PENDULUM SWING: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1h-9a1IdS97IJojQhYHHkiWGkmOSaHzkr

SECOND PENDULUM SWING: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1azF7sSxZww0EMsnR7qSPsefxYZ8WZnuM

What I’ve learnt:

Setting up the simple factors first by making sure that the first the speed of the pendulum was established. This helped me with my vision of how the animation was going to play out from beginning to end of the project. My first attempt was a bit iffy, the speed and arcs of my pendulum swings were off beat but I eventually picked it up in my second try which looked much more refined but still a bit of timing errors but I am quite happy with it.

WEEK 3

Ball with Tail

Ball with tail: This one was quite tricky, particularly since we had to build up on a story for the character itself. I had to personally set up a miniature storyboard to see where the ball with tail was going.

First I had to write the storyboard down then display a stepped animatic of the actual storyboard before animating the scene itself.

BLOCKING ANIMATION: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wvFnCunCIU-nl4kDPcTyW8vfqX4n1epN

TAILED BALL ANIMATION:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1vHYGfxoOFXREIeUNdCizwqF6t3AxGbov

WEEK 4

PUSH PULL AND LIFT:

Animation reflection

Push:

For this exercise I developed a sense of trying to create a simple narrative at first:

1. Character is in awe of the size of the object and tries to observe it closely

2.Character then tries to push it slowly but surely handles it

The flaws that I generally see with it is that the hands themselves do not maintain a steady motion, I tried to ideally make sure that they stay steady but unfortunately was one of my shortcomings. The other one was the timing which I also thought was quite unfortunate, it presented itself in a way which the character moved faster to move the object than I wanted it to be.

PUSH ANIMATION: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1POGuPVGfSbtTFsNLJGg2QE8zpytoEfo4

PULL

The pull was something I felt was a success when I look back on it. I wanted to establish a character that gets a feel of the weight at first and then continues to try and yank it to get a contrast with what the character is dealing with.

PULL ANIMATION: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1MtIMWBw2fLSFHKdpQsh4d5MNJO2Rim07

Animation reflection

The one thing that I could not get working was the rope itself being constrained to the hand which is why I actually had 2 versions of the pulling, one with the rope and one without the rope. When you look at it it does look quite silly particularly when showing the rope being inside of the hand. Overall I do feel happy although once again the pacing itself isn’t necessarily paced properly and I do actually think about just trying to move the object as well as the character but to me I just wanted to show that the object itself is quite immovable.

LIFT

The lift, I felt actually relatable as I also go to the gym and try to lift medicine balls in a similar manner. I tried to essentially recapture that feeling that I get when I do lift and use that feeling as reference for the animation.

LIFT ANIMATION: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1QSTAoD60H5CaN3Tkjrgi2-_ZkzIksZ_O

Animation reflection

Once again, like all the other animations, I establish the heavy weight of the object that the character is motivated for. I am actually glad that the animation turned out like it was but at the same time I felt I could’ve done more with the time after the weight is lifted such as dropping the weight dramatically between his legs after he has managed to lift it up.

There is also another flaw where during the beginning we do actually see the weight being quickly dragged towards him as the character prepares to lift it up steadily.

But I also felt that this could also show as a sign of his eagerness and willingness to lift the object by giving more energy initially and subtle frustration doing so as well as underestimation.

WEEK 5

DIVE

By far my favourite experiment. I feel like the dive help established many of the animation principles learned throughout this unit such as:

-squash and stretch

- follow through/overlapping action

- anticipation

-exaggeration

I started with blocking my whole animation as followed by the image file. I also wanted to set up a simple story with the dive as well:

DIVE BLOCKING:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jsF6Zxu6jINhTFz3hGdEb-nQTGgmQrsH

1.character is a bit nervous at first looking down

2.character then readies himself to jump(signalling anticipation)

3.Character jumps in the air with an exaggerated body and prepares to leap back down

4. Squashes and stretches afterwards

5. Same process repeats itself

DIVE ANIMATION: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1HrmMzugiP9LS1iGU3KLoZCmBteU1eeFe

Animation reflection

I really liked how the whole animation turned out, mainly because I actually took time to plan about the dive. I think that the set up and timing for the dive was the most accurate part about it especially when leaping onto the plank and lunging back off of it. The weighted reaction and anticipation of the of send off was the selling point of the dive for me anyways. The one thing that I will criticise the dive for is the second half of it where the character is leaping into the water, the drop off there really feels off in terms of timing as well as the characters body looks out of place. But other than that I feel like the dive was pulled off to a good enough standard.

Overall I do feel as though I have improved myself as a part of this process, learning the many different animation principles helped set up my planning with what I generally want it visualised. The biggest thing for me however was making sure that I do the basic and easy movements first of the object then to follow through with it afterwards. I think that was the biggest thing I learnt out of this.

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Reflection on assessment

I learnt a lot throughout doing the exercises, the concept of movement applying arcs, timing and spacing towards my character movement, the perception that animation is more of a visual concept placed in your mind rather than a reality, using gestural movements to display an illusion of reality. I figured out about how to maintain weight in a character or object and being able to visualise a third  dimension inside a 2D image. Overall I am very happy with what I have learnt throughout this course and what I can hope to achieve with animation in the near future.

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life drawing images, sorry for bad quality

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Gestural drawing

I found the uniqueness of gestural drawings throughout life drawing, I tried and gave it a shot, I found that the drawings didn’t exactly have to copy the actual character but the intention behind gestural drawing was to portray an emotion or an imagination of some sort. All in all I did really like the gestural drawings as they became a great way to express a certain portrayal of a character and their own personification.

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Life drawing exercises

Througout the life drawing, I found the struggles of doing perspective especially when a character is within a position,posture which depicts an angle, I learnt to rather overcome this by adapting another mental attitude that it is fine to make several mistakes as I began to not take erasers with me during classes. The mistake lines in drawing are what makes up what their unique style is by showing what they were thinking, how they got there and how they overcame it

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ballet adagio- gestural rotoscoping- Robert Tang

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Task 3 Ballet adagio Gestural Rotoscoping

For this task I wanted to show some body exaggeration in the characters and apply some arcs within the rotoscope, I tried to not be detailed and relate realistically towards the characters, but much more for their fluid motion

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Weighlift task 2-Robert tang

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Task 2 - Weightlift

for my weightlift i wanted to show my character heavily struggle, struggle so much with the heavy object that his body became somewhat exaggerrated to an extent as he slowly proceeds to pick up the object ever so slightly

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Head turn animation-Robert Tang

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Task 1 Head turn

throughout learning about the head turns, I thought it was just a matter of adjusting towards a realistic head turn until I realised that head turns can also be unnatural and still look smooth and flawless in motion, as a result I took a step forward and tried to go for a rather exaggerated head turn where my character reacts strongly as he/she looks around, I played with the idea of expressions of reaction. Then I tried to draw more realistically but keeping its cartoon features

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thoughts part 2

generally speaking  life drawing made me adapt to fast paced gestures and how it has practised and pressured me into adapting within a certain scenario where I should just draw freely instead of carefully, that I should learn to take risks and be fine with it regardless of the outcome. After all it is a process of learning about how you think and how you draw as well.

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Thoughts on the assessment

Throughout the whole semester 2 I began to realise that animation does not have no generally look very good, its about you good you can tell the story, whether it’s with drawn stick figures or gestural drawings rather than full anatomical art, i began to get out of my habit on trying to draw what i see instead of what I think, on of the most important things I was told was that I should just observe the general structure of what is seen in front of me and I should look at my paper more often and think how I would interpret it within my own unique style

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Drawing for animation 2 Assessment 2

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Reflection on assessment

Overall I thought the progress of my animation did improve, i learnt about the most important idea and aspects when it comes to being able to giving the images a form of motion, mainly to do with the application of the principles, spacing,timing which applies crucially to the storytelling aspect of animation. Using exaggeration as a form of character expression and being able to enhance the given illusion of animation.

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after doing my walk cycle  i realised  how walking is generally perceived as a force of balance. I noticed this when I was walking that if you put one feet out on one side the arm on the other side will move in the polar opposite direction as a way to maintain balance because if you walk with both your arm and leg on one side in the same direction you will lose balance because all your weight is within that direction. Maintaining balance is the key to walking.