criticalreflectionblog2025

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Unit Final: Showreel:

Intro:

              The final assignment for this module task me with creating a showreel of all the animations I created over the semester. While I have already made these animations in previous units, they could use some improvements in how they are animated as well as having more fleshed out environments and lighting to be animated in. I decided to dedicate this last blog post to improv on all of my previous animations in order to make them nice and presentable for the final showreel.

Horse Trot Improvements:

The first animation I chose to improve on was my horse trot animation as the animation was mostly fleshed out only needing some animation in the tail and some smoothness in the head. I spent most of my time with this animation working on the senary and lighting. The initial tutorial came with a farm set, but it was all untextured, so I added some textures I found online. I also added a skybox using an HDRI I found on Polyhaven to help light the scene as well as provide a background for everything. To really help flesh this scene out I decided that since this is a farm and there were some tutorials in the module about it, I would add some animated grass to the ground. Adding and animating the grass was easy enough by following the tutorial, however I did have adjusted how the scene would be framed due to some performance issues. Initially the camera was to follow the horse trotting across the field but that required a lot of grass for the camera to film and my computer does not like it when it has to animate a lot of moving grass. Instead, I had the camera placed low to the ground in a stationary position with the horse trotting towards in order to limit the amount of grass on screen. Some sacrifices had to be made there for the grass to work but I’m pretty happy with the turnout and I think this one is ready for the showreel.

Horse Run Improvements:

              I did a similar thing with the horse run animation as I did with the trot animation having them both move across a farm field but for the run, I wanted to follow the horse as it ran across the field which required adding a lot of grass for it to run through. Having the grass really tanked the performance of Maya which is why I the trot animation was shot the way it was, but the main eater of performance here wasn’t the grass itself but the animation of it moving in the wind. Since the camera would be moving fast with the horse’s run, I decided to not animate any of the grass as the fast movement would make it hard to notice the lack of movement. The rest of the scene was easy from there with a lot of the same set-up from the trot animation including the same hdri skybox from Polyhaven and overall came out quite nicely.

Dino Walk Improvements:

              The next animation I chose to refine was the dinosaur walk cycle as similar to the horse trot its animations were mostly fleshed out only needing some smoothing out of the head motions leaving some room to flesh out the environment. Liking what I did for the horse trot scene and the variety of different foliage options available in Maya, I chose to add grass to all of my scenes in order to bring out some life to the environment. Seeing as one of the foliage options was cattails a plant commonly found in wet swamp environments, I also had the idea of animating some water for the dinosaur to walk through although animated water wasn’t covered in this course so I would have to learn that myself. Using this tutorial I found online from USER I used Maya’s Boss editor to create a wave effect on a plane which interacted with the dinosaur as it walked through. Combine this with some cattail grass and trees alongside a skybox from Polyhaven and I had a scene of a dinosaur making its way through a swampy environment. I did have some issues with the water effect making sure the Boss editor had everything paired up correctly and giving the water enough polygons to have a convincing enough wave effect. Another big issue I had involved rendering with the Arnold renderer continuing to be a massive pain that I have no idea how to work and is problems after problems whenever I try to use it. I had to make do with Maya’s playblast function instead which didn’t have all the fancy lighting effect but at least looked decent.  Once everything was set in stone the performance was quite slow with all the moving parts and high poly water, but I was able to render the scene out and I’m pretty satisfied with the results.

Crow Fly Improvements:

              Next on my list of refinements was the crow fly animation, and I think the animations for this were good as is. The digging animation could be a lot better, but the point of this unit was to animate a crow flying and I that animation was done well. I added some grass to the ground to make the environment a bit livelier although the main hurdle I had to get over with this piece was lighting. As I’ve said previously, I have no idea how the Arnold renderer works and any attempt to figure it out has resulted in failure, so I had to make do with default lighting and playblast renders. The lighting I was able to get with these limitations was good enough to get some results I liked however the big issue I had was with the lighting of the crows themselves as they came out really dark in the current set up but any attempt to make them brighter either didn’t work or ruined the rest of the scene. I tried playing with the lights, light linking, understanding Arnold, none of them worked for what I had in mind. What ended up working was the ambient color option in the crow’s texture setting allowing them to essentially glow in the dark without disrupting the lighting for the rest of the scene. All in all, I think it turned out pretty good in the end.

Spider Walk Improvements:

              For the spider walk animation I wanted to have the spider crawl along the wall as it is what they naturally do so I thought it would look nice for them to do that in my animation. The original plan was for the spider to walk down the wall before transitioning to the floor and keep walking until it is offscreen. However, it turns out that having a spider go from wall to floor, while looking simple and is something they do all the time, is actually quite difficult to animate. Try to get the spider to plant its legs down on an uneven surface with half of its body on the wall and the other half on the floor while having it smoothly move from one surface to another had so many complications that were far outside my field of expertise. So far that I decided to just have the spider walk across the wall instead of any of those complex movements.

              I still wanted to do something more with this animation and thought that since I am having the spider walk across the wall of a house from USER that I would use of another tutorial provided by the module and add a flag animation to the house. The module tutorial did cover all the steps I needed to take to animate the flag, but I came across a number of issues along the way. The first issue was that the flag simply wouldn’t work after I applied cloth physics to it. I would apply the nCloth physics to them but when I pressed play nothing would happen. That took a while for me to figure out what was wrong and eventually figured out that the issue had to do with the cloth set to start animating on frame 0 and I had my animation set to start on frame 101 as that what was recommended to me by the module tutorials. At least that’s what I think is the issue as I couldn’t find the exact setting to have it start on frame 101 so instead, I brought everything back to frame 0 so that it would work with the flag.

              Now for some random nonsense actually helping me this time, the Arnold Renderer decided to work this time. I’m not sure why exactly it decided to play nice this time and be problematic all those other times but I’m not complaining if it means my scene will get so good lighting. Although Arnold did decide it wanted to get the last laugh by not having the flag animate itself when it rendered my scene so that was some more pain for me to figure out, but I eventually figured that I needed to cache the cloth simulation to make it work in render. While it’s not what I originally intended for this scene I’m still pretty satisfied with the turnout especially the flag animation that turned out really well.

Scorpion Walk Improvements:

              With all the grassy environments I’ve been putting my animations through, I decided to have my scorpion walk animation be set in a desert with fitting skybox from Polyhaven and some accompanying catus models from Printable_Models on Sketchfab. Considering the scorpion rig I was provided is less of a natural scorpion and more of a robotic version I wanted to give the model a metal texture to go alongside that but complications with the texture setting made me abandon that idea. Simply put, the Arnold renderer was being confusing as always and any attempt to make it work with a metal texture only came back errors. The renderer decided to play nice when there wasn’t a metal texture applied so stuck with a flat color for its texture which worked fine as it gave the scorpion a plastic look to it. Besides those adjustments, the scene was already good to go, and I was able to render the scene out to look quite pretty.

Jellyfish Improvements:

              For the jellyfish animation I knew I wanted it to move across the environment instead of just floating in place although I did have some complications with that matter. The original plan was for the jellyfish to move along a curve similar to what I did in the crow fly animation but doing so required clearing the root control bone which I have been using for its up and down movement. Clearing this allows the jellyfish to move along the curve but only in a static straightforward motion without any of the slowing down and speeding up you would expect of something moving through water. Instead I ditched the curve and animated the motion of the jellyfish manually which required a lot of back and forward across the animation to make the jellyfish to move across the scene in a manner that looks somewhat convincing. Once that was finished with, I populated the set with some sea plants Maya had available in the content browser and added an ocean skybox I found from opengameart.org by sirsnowy7 and with all that the scene was good to go for the showreel.

Leopard Walk Improvements:

I know I put a lot of effort into making my leopard walk cycle look unique, but to be honest I don’t think it looks good. The movements were very stiff with none of it flowing with each other and it looks even more off when viewed from other angles. I really wasn’t happy with were this was going and decided to redo the animation again from scratch to make it something that’s a lot more natural and more along the lines of what is laid out in the tutorial videos. Well at least partially along the lines of the tutorial videos as they don’t contain much besides the basic foundation of the walk cycle. This meant I was left on my own to smooth everything out and with this being the last animation I made for this module I wanted to be my best work to serve as a culmination of everything I learned during this module.

              First order of business was to find a completed leopard walk cycle that I could use as reference to better understand what I needed for my animation. Some searching online lead me to this video by Alessandro Tommasi who’s walk cycle used the same rig and software as I and who’s animation really smooth with lots of detail across the rig and multiple camera angles to see and appreciate every nook and cranny of this animation. The reference showed a lot of ways in which I could improve my animation, one such way was to include some side to side motion to the head and body alongside its up and down motion to help make the head and body look a lot less stiff. I also adjusted the elbows on the front legs to have them spike up as the leg is in its highest point to really emphasize the skin and muscles on this. Additionally, I utilized motion curves on the legs to help smooth out the stepping movements. Motion curves provide a visual representation of the path something will take during the animation and it’s usefully in knowing whether your animations or smooth or not. It was especially helpful when animating the back legs as the tutorial had them quick back as they left the ground and it was making the animation look stiff which the motion curves made very clear while also making it easy to fix them. There were also a lot of minor, secondary animations I included to help flesh everything including tail movements, ear flaps and eyes blinking. One small thing I got from the reference video that I really liked was how the toes on the feet would spread out when they touched the ground. It’s really small but I just found that neat.

              One issue I did have when working with this reference that I didn’t find out until half way through was that the timing on their animation was shorter then what it was on my animation. For my animation I used the timing laid out in the tutorial videos which was a 32 frame walk cycle while the reference used a faster 26 frame walk cycle. By the time I figured that out, I was already halfway through the animation process and wasn’t able to pivot towards a 26 frame cycle so I had to stick to 32 frame cycle and adjust things to fit that. It wasn’t the much of an issue I really just had to lengthen the side to side movements by about frame but most of the other animations worked fine on the 32 frame walk cycle.

              Once the animation was finished, I gave the scene some color with a skybox from Polyhaven and some grass from Maya’s content browser for the leopard to walk through. While it’s not as unique as what I originally intended, I’m really satisfied with how this animation turned out. I got to make use of all of the skills I learned during this module to create something that I feel really proud of making.

Extra Footage and Showreel Creation:

              With all the animations fully finalized, it was time to put everything together into a single video. But before I did that I wanted some extra footage of my animation on a blank set from multiple angles so that whoever was reviewing my animation could fully analyze every aspect of the animation without any props or foliage blocking the view. Filming this extra footage was fairly straightforward as I just planted the animation on a flat disc with either a simple skybox or the same skybox from the main video and possibly some foliage to the side so the disc isn’t completely baren. The main hassle was simply the tedium of filming all of it, as it required me to film the animation from an angle, top down, side profile and straight forward and then edit that all together so that all four angles are shown in one clip. It wasn’t hard, just really tedious.

              Besides the extra footage I also had to edit the main animations into the main showreel which was a lot easier to do as I had already edited them while I was finalizing their animations, so all the matter was putting it all into one video. The main thing I had to do for this showreel was the sound editing as I had these animations with detailed environments but none of them had sound so I had to fix that. I got all my sounds from Freesound.org which had a large variety of different sounds for free which I used to help bring some life to my scene. One issue I did have with the sound was the walking sounds as it was hard to find sounds that perfectly matched the walking in the animations so there may be some desyncs with between the animation and the sound. Although for the most part was fairly. I also needed to make sure that everyone was credited at the end which wasn’t hard just a bit time consuming getting all the names together.

Conclusion:

              With this I am now finally done with writing portion of this module along with the animation and video editing. All that remains for me now is to get all this onto my blog site so that it can be submitted to the professor. It’s really relieving to be almost done with this module although I do appreciate everything I learned and made during this time. I’m still pretty new to animation as a whole so getting to better hone me skills on some more advanced models compared to the previous bipeds was some good experience. I learned how to parent an animation to move along a path, how to bake curves so multiple animations can transition from one another, how to copy and paste animation from one bone to another, and many more new skills alongside improvements to my preexisting skillset. It was a lot of work to get this module done but I’m really proud of all my work and I’m looking forward to learning more in the next module.

Credits:

Rigs Used (Provided by the University):

Leopard Rig by Truong Mothman TD Horse Rig TRex dinRig v2.0 Indian House Crow Raa Spider Rig JellySquid Rig Scorpions Rig

Additional Assets Used:

Turbosquid.com. (2024). TurboSquid. [online] Available at: https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/chapel-464431 [Accessed 15 May 2025].

Gumroad. (2017). Stylized Knight Rig. [online] Available at: https://raykruk.gumroad.com/l/StylizedKnight [Accessed 15 May 2025].

Turbosquid.com. (2024). TurboSquid. [online] Available at: https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/shovels-rakes-brooms-axes-hammers-knives-saws-26-pbr-objects-1773842 [Accessed 15 May 2025].

Turbosquid.com. (2024). TurboSquid. [online] Available at: https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/old-house-building-2389109 [Accessed 15 May 2025].

free3d.com. (n.d.). Cactus v1 Free 3D Model - .obj .stl - Free3D. [online] Available at: https://free3d.com/3d-model/-cactus-v1--424886.html.

‌Other foliage from Maya's content browser.

Skybox Used (From Poly Haven):

Haven, P. (n.d.). HDRIs • Poly Haven. [online] Poly Haven. Available at: https://polyhaven.com/hdris.

‌Resting Place 2 by Sergej Majboroda Belfast Farmhouse by Dimitrios Savva and Jarod Guest Crystal Falls by Greg Zaal Satara Night (No LIghts) by Greg Zaal Pretoria Gardens by Dimitrios Savva and Jarod Guest Goegap by Greg Zaal

Additional Skyboxes:

Ambientcg.com. (2024). Night Sky HDRI 003 on ambientCG. [online] Available at: https://ambientcg.com/view?id=NightSkyHDRI003.

genderfreak (2022). Ocean HDRI/skybox. [online] OpenGameArt.org. Available at: https://opengameart.org/content/ocean-hdriskybox [Accessed 15 May 2025].

Reference Used:

alessandro tommasi (2023). Leopard Walk Cycle Animation - MAYA 2023. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVSmp1s0TI0 [Accessed 15 May 2025].

‌Sound Effects Used (From Freesound.org):

Freesound (2012). Freesound. [online] Freesound.org. Available at: https://freesound.org/.

‌Walking on Grass 4 by Nikoiaconis Wind Mistral Strong Dry Grass Insects Distant Cars by Silencyo Horse Walking by in Dirt 02 by Audio Man Galopar de un Caballo by Alexito 116 Amazon 06 by Volivieri Walking in Shallow Water by Seenms Ambience City Night dpa semibinaural by Nimlos Digging1 by Yemimoses Small Bird Flying by Xfixy March City Park Long by Klankbeeld Small Bird Flying by Xfixy March City Park Long by Klankbeeld Underwater Ambience by Akemov Metal Walk Reverb by Khaotix523 Looping Gentle Wind Ambience on a Desert by Dhallcompose

Music Used:

Stack Man (2020). Get Stick Bugged lol. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC7oUOUEEi4 [Accessed 2 Mar. 2025].

[criticalreflectionblog2025]

Unit 12: Jellyfish movement:

              For the last unit in this module, I was tasked with animating something completely different for everything else I’ve animated so far. It’s different in that it doesn’t even have legs to walk on as I am tasked with animating a jellyfish swimming through the sea. While it is pretty different it’s also a bit similar to some of the other units I did, namely the spider rig with it having eight limbs to animate and the fox tail rig with it also being very simple. Despite its differences they consisted primarily of a root bone for movement, a squash and stretch bone, and a bunch of bones for the tentacles. But the tentacles were probably the easiest to animate as the rig also had a bone to control all of them at once. I wasn’t any complicated any complicated stepping motion either, I was simply having the tentacles curl in and out as the jellyfish moved up and down which was automatically done by that single bone on the rig. The up and down and squash and stretch motions weren’t much harder, being pretty similar to what was done in the fox tail animation. I did flash it up a little by giving the jellyfish a spin as it went up and adjusted the timing a bit to make the upwards movement a bit flasher.

              The most complicated thing about this rig was not any of the movement controls but instead the face controls as unlike a normal jellyfish this is a cartoon version with eyes and a mouth that can be animated. I haven’t used facial animation before, so this is a first for me, I did my best to add some mouth movement as it moved as well as some occasional blinking in the eyes and I think it turned out alright if a bit basic. One issue I did have was with the textures on the eyes as they seemed to be not aligned with each other and I’m not sure how to fix that and will be something for me to address in the final showreel. It may be basic but it was nice to learn something new with this animation and I’m pretty sure the next module will include a lot of facial animation so this is a good starting point for the next module.

Credits:

Vimeo.com. (2025). Vimeo. [online] Available at: https://vimeo.com/842779525 [Accessed 15 May 2025].

JellySquid Rig, Provided by the University of Hertfordshire

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Unit 10: Scorpion Walk:

              This animation is quite similar to what I did for the spider walk animation with them both being multi-legged bug-like creatures. Main difference with this one being the inclusion of a tail that required some secondary animations to move alongside everything else. I did have some issues with the tutorial as only the first part was available, and the rest were all locked with no way of accessing them. Although since the scorpion rig was very similar to the spider, I simply used its tutorial in place of the scorpion tutorial, and it worked out quite fine. I did have to account for the scorpion having six legs while the spider had eight, but it wasn’t much of a hassle and ultimately involved me doing less work than on the spider. I also had to animate the tail and the other secondary animations on my own but they’re not much different to what I had already done so it isn’t much work either. The biggest issue I had actually happened at the very beginning with the shading of the scorpion. When I imported the rig for some reason the rig was completely black when it should have been white and it took a while to figure out what was wrong but eventually, I found out that the shading was inverted for some reason so parts that should be lit up were dark and parts that should be dark we lit up. I was able to invert most of it back to normal but for some reason the right claw and left eye wouldn’t invert no matter what I did. Shh it’s not a bug it’s a feature ;) . Eventually, the proper tutorial did become available, but it ended up being pretty much the same as what I had already done so it was all good for me.

One new thing the tutorial did offer me was how to bake my motion curves so that can easily loop my animation for set amount of time until I want it to play another animation. Until now I simply used infinity curves to have the animation loop itself but that only works if it’s the only animation in the scene, if there was another animation for the model to do the loop would break. Baking my curves allows me to easily assign key frames along the infinity curve without the need to add them. It’s super helpful for the animation workflow as it makes it a lot easier to transition from one animation to another and is something I’ll need to use all the time in longer animations. The tutorial taught me how to make the scorpion stop walking and I used this as an opportunity to have the scorpion transition into a dance animation inspired off  an old meme from 2020 (Get Stick Bugged). I would also like to note that this dance animation was actually the first thing I made with this rig when I was learning how everything worked and with what I learned in the tutorial I thought it was a good idea to include it in the end. While the walking animation was easy to get done I did learn some new things in the end about baking motion curves while also teaching me how to improvise and make use of my previous knowledge to get the work done when official instructions were unavailable.

Credits:

Alexander Williams (2017). Scorpion Tutorial Pt1. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaFXmR6unzk [Accessed 15 May 2025].

‌Scorpions Rig, Provided by the University of Hertfordshire

https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/high-definition-subway-entrance-432822

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Unit 8:Dinosaur Walk:

              This unit tasked me with animating a walk cycle for a dinosaur rig. The animation tutorial and provided rig weren’t difficult to work with and were quite similar to previous rigs I worked on. However, this is the first time animating a creature like this with a lot of weight to it which did affect how the walk cycle was animated. The increase in weight led to a slower walk cycle compared to previous cycles with more exaggerated secondary animations and snappier foot landings to really emphasize the heaviness of this character. It's interesting seeing how the walk cycle changes depending on the body of each character. This dinosaur is heavier than most of the characters I animated although he’s not that heavy being more of a raptor than a full-blown t-rex, at least that’s what I think it is, I am not a paleontologist. Besides it meant the animation wasn’t quite as heavy as I expected and even now feels a little too light that I might want to adjust that when I finalize this animation for the showreel. But for now, I’m pretty happy with the results and hope to animate some heavier rigs sometime in the future.

Credits:

Vimeo.com. (2025). Vimeo. [online] Available at: https://vimeo.com/191444953 [Accessed 15 May 2025].

‌TRex dinoRig v2.0, Provided by the University of Hertfordshire

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Unit 6: Crow Fly:

              For this unit I was tasked with animating a crow flying through the air. Like the previous animations I did, animating the basic flight motion wasn’t much of a hassle thanks to how straight forward the tutorial videos were, however, the provided rig did have some issues with it. Specifically, the issue I had with the crow rig was how low quality it is with an extremely minimum polygon count limiting how clean I could make the animations while also looking off when view at a close distance. The intention of all this is that you’re supposed to only view the bird from a far-off distance where the lack of detail wouldn’t be noticeable. However, that also makes it hard to appreciate all the work and detail in the animation while also making it hard to expand the animation past what’s established in the tutorial. There are some higher quality rigs online that I can use but they all cost money and I’m already spending enough as it is on this class I don’t want to spend anymore so I’m going to have to make do with what’s provided.

              So instead of expanding on the animation, I instead chose to expand the scene surrounding it. The tutorial had me add in a church and graveyard set for the crow to fly though and I imagined a scene of a grave robber digging up a grave in the dead of night as crows fly by. Importing the extra assets was easy enough, I got a knight to be my grave robber, a shovel for him to dig up the grave, a nighttime hdri from Polyhaven for the skybox and a little lantern to help set the scene. I’m not 100% satisfied with the knight rig I got to be the grave robber, I don’t think he’s the best fit for this scene, however, he was the only rig that was free and could work that I found that at least somewhat fits the scene.

              Making the grave digging animation was certainly the big challenge of this scene. Besides not having a tutorial to guide me, I’ve also done an animation of a character bending over and holding a two-handed item. Getting him to hold the shovel was the easy part but still had some issues I had to solve. There was a lot of back and forth on how I was supposed to order the parenting of the hands and shovel; was I supposed to parent the shovel to the right hand and then the left hand to the right hand or the left hand to the shovel. That took a bit to figure out, but it got figured out eventually, the actual digging part is when things got really complicated. I had some digging references and a good idea of what had to be done but putting it into practice it was a total mess.

Just trying to get the shovel into position was a pain; there were a lot of elbows clipping into the body, shoulders twisting and distorting uncontrollably, and a lot of very stretchy arms much longer than they really should be. I’m not quite sure what the issue was weather it was something wrong with the rig or if it was just my lack of experience at animating something I’ve never done before but this part took far longer than any other part of the animation. I tried a lot of different things to see if they would work I tired IK on the arm, I tried FK, I played around with the parenting on the hands and shovels, I even complete redid the animation a bunch of times with different arm and body positions to see if any of them looked better.

It was this constant tweaking of the arms that I eventually got something that looked somewhat normal, I’m still not 100% satisfied but after what I’ve been through, I’ll take what I can get. Having the character bend down to dig and then throw the dirt away was a lot easier after having got basics put down although some distortions with the arms still persisted which required some manual sorting out. Although, after getting past the tough start the rest of the animation was doable for me, it’s still pretty rough being my first time doing something like this and there’s a lot of room for improvement which I might work on later but for an animation I made for no reason I’m ok with it as is. One thing I will probably work on later is the lighting as the HDRI I included in the skybox is alright, but some parts of the scene are a bit too dark, namely the crows which this whole scene is about are bit too dark and a little hard. It’s a bit difficult to fix this with the crow’s black feathers making it dark by default paired with my lack of experience with lighting in Maya leaves me stuck currently on how to fix this and is something of note to work on when I make my final showreel.

Credits:

Vimeo.com. (2025). Vimeo. [online] Available at: https://vimeo.com/836537043 [Accessed 15 May 2025].

Gumroad. (2017). Stylized Knight Rig. [online] Available at: https://raykruk.gumroad.com/l/StylizedKnight [Accessed 15 May 2025].

Turbosquid.com. (2024). TurboSquid. [online] Available at: https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/shovels-rakes-brooms-axes-hammers-knives-saws-26-pbr-objects-1773842 [Accessed 15 May 2025].

Zaal, G. (n.d.). Satara Night (No Lamps) HDRI • Poly Haven. [online] Poly Haven. Available at: https://polyhaven.com/a/satara_night_no_lamps.

Turbosquid.com. (2024). TurboSquid. [online] Available at: https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/chapel-464431 [Accessed 15 May 2025].

[criticalreflectionblog2025]

Unit 5: Spider Walk:

              This was one of the more straightforward units in this module, at least at this stage of the module. This unit tasks me with creating a walk cycle for a spider which while a first for me to animate something with that many legs the tutorial made it pretty easy with how short and straight forward it is. The big thing I learned here was copying and pasting animations from one spider leg to another meaning I only really had to animate one leg and transfer its animation over to the other legs with some minor adjustments. Although they weren’t that minor as there was a lot of back and forward with each of the leg animations to ensure none of them overlapped with each other. It was very straightforward to get this animation done but I did learn some new stuff about copying and pasting animations and got accustomed to animating a creature with these many legs. I do want to do something more with it for the final showreel, just not this instance as I have some other units and things I want to focus on.

Credits:

Vimeo.com. (2025). Vimeo. [online] Available at: https://vimeo.com/101100802 [Accessed 15 May 2025].

‌Raa Spider Rig, Provided by the University of Hertfordshire

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Unit 4: Horse Run

This animation was pretty similar to the horse trot I did in the last unit just at a faster pace, it even involved the same rig, so I didn’t have to spend time learning a new one. The tutorial was easy to follow as usual and honestly, I don’t really have a lot to say about this animation. I could definitely improve the secondary animation on the horse’s head and body which is something I plan to do once I start preparing for the final demo reel. Although much that I can say about this unit is stuff I have already said about the horse trot animation.

              One thing I do want to talk about with this animation and with Maya in general is lighting, textures and rendering. I’m still fairly new to Maya only having started using it late last year and there is still a lot about this program that I don’t fully understand. Right now, I’ve simply been using Maya’s playblast function to render my scenes with flat lighting and blank textures for the environment, but if I want these animations to look good for the demo reel, I’ll need to take these aspects into account. My animations as is look unrefined with the unfinished set and take some time to learn how to better light and texture my render will go long may in improving my work. The main reason I wanted to talk about this here is because Connor Hoehn, one of the other students in this class, posted their own work in progress horse run animation to the class Discord and I was amazed at how good the lighting was in the scene with how you could see the light rays shine through the building as the horse ran through it. The lighting greatly improved the scene for me and it encouraged me to want put some more effort into the lighting for my animations.

Credits:

Vimeo.com. (2025). Vimeo. [online] Available at: https://vimeo.com/838257477 [Accessed 15 May 2025].

‌Mothman TD Horse Rig, Provided by the University of Hertfordshire

[criticalreflectionblog2025]

Unit 3: Horse Trot:

              This was the next animation assignment after the leopard walk cycle and after all the work I put into giving the leopard and fancy walk I decided to stick closer to the tutorials this time and give the horse a normal trot cycle. The horse rig itself was fairly complicated with a lot of controls much like the leopard rig but the structure isn’t much different to the leopard so it was easy to start working on it. The animation itself was easy enough to make thanks to the tutorials providing a clear and concise step by step guide on how to animate the horse trot.

              While I don’t want to take this animation in a new direction like the previous ones, I do think the animation I made following the tutorial could be improved significantly. As of right now, I got all of the core motions put down with leg motion being something I’m certainly satisfied with, however, the secondary animations on the head and body are something I can definitely improve on. The tutorial did go over some of the secondary animations, but they came out as a bit stiff looking and can certainly use some smoothing out especially in the head and tail. Some references will certainly help with improving my animation but what really encouraged me to want to improve this animation was when I saw a horse trot animation from one of the other students in this module. Matt Lawson-Hall is a student who did this module before me and uploaded his demo reel for the module onto the class Discord. The animations are really well done, and it showed how much better I can make my animations and what the baseline should be for good work in this class. There’s certainly a lot for me to improve on, but I also have some other units to work on and I don’t want to be dragged down refining my work so I’m going to take a break on this animation for now and come back to this later when I need to work on my final demo reel.

Credits:

Vimeo.com. (2025). Vimeo. [online] Available at: https://vimeo.com/841798716 [Accessed 15 May 2025].

Mothman TD Horse Rig, Provided by the University of Hertfordshire

Brownlow Farm from Turbosquid (No longer available)

[criticalreflectionblog2025]

Unit 2: Leopard Walk

The next unit of my animation module tasked me with animating a leopard walk cycle. This task was definitely a step up in terms of difficulty compared to the fox hop I did previously. For the one, the rig is a lot more complicated than simplistic fox ball whose controls I can count with my two hands the leopard rig with all its intricate controls for even the smallest parts of the body may have had over a hundred controls to play with. The walk cycle itself was also a lot more complicated in comparison to the fox hop with the walk requiring a stepping motion across four legs alongside accompanying secondary animations in the body, head and tail that complement the stepping motion.

              It’s certainly a lot more complicated than the previous animation but the tutorial provided with the module gave me an easy step by step guide on how to create the walk cycle. However, like the previous animation, I wanted to add more to elevate this animation which of course also elevated the amount of problems I had with it. Similar to what I did for the previous animation, I wanted to add some personality to the walk by putting it to the beat of a song from a cute cat meme (Chipi chipi chapa chapa cat) with me specifically getting inspiration for this from a YouTube video by Delliea (CHIPI CHIPI CHAPA CHAPA). Lastly, I also took some inspiration from the Lion King to use as a reference for the walk cycle.

              Just like when I expanded the previous animation, not having a tutorial to guide me was the biggest hurdle I had when making this animation as it left me on my own to figure out the movements of everything and how I would solve any issues that arise. To start things off I took the walk cycle I had made following the tutorials and sped it up so that it steps in beat with the song. I then adjusted the legs and other body parts to better match the references I had. This part was surprisingly easy thanks to the references giving me a good idea on how the animation should although the head movements did require some work to be put into it as I wasn’t happy with the basic side to side motion and how the key frames naturally slowed in and out so I had to do a bunch of manually editing of those key frames to really emphasize the head movements.

              The big issue I had with this animation had less to do with any big motion of the animation but more so that once everything was key framed and animated and I pressed play the animation looked kind of off. It wasn’t something major like a bone going way too far or moving when it shouldn’t be. It’s something far more subtle and it’s something that’s hard for me to describe. All the main motions are there, and they match well with the references, but it just looks uncanny when put into motion. Maybe something is moving slightly too fast or maybe it’s coming in at too hard of an angle or maybe it has to do with the angle of the camera as the references are 2d and weren’t meant to be seen in 3d from all angles. Perhaps there simply isn’t enough detail and secondary animation that makes it look off and the animation as a whole is too stiff. The biggest problem I’m having here is that this is all a maybe as I have no idea what is wrong with it, it’s not something blatantly obvious that can be fixed a few adjustments, it’s something subtle that might be spread across the entire animation.

              I did my best to make this animation look better, I added some secondary animation such as foot rolling to add more detail, I visualized the motion curves to smooth out the motions, I consulted the other classmates for their advice on what I should improve on and even look at some live action leopards walk cycles to see how the walk in real life. It certainly looks better than previously but I think it still looks a little uncanny, but it could just be a result of me looking at this animation for too long and being too critical of everything. I’m going to stop for now as I have other units to work on with their own animations and I’ll come back to this once I’m done with those with a fresh set of eyes.

              It may have not been the best idea to deviate from the tutorial, but it was a good learning experience for me to make some work without the guidance of a tutorial or instructor. Not only does this help me stand out as unique from my peers, this also gives me an idea of how this animation work will be like after school as I’ll be on my own there to animate so it’s best to try some of that here, so I’ll be ready when I need to do this later.

Credits:

Vimeo.com. (2025). Vimeo. [online] Available at: https://vimeo.com/567547468 [Accessed 15 May 2025].

Leopard Rig by Truong, Provided by the University of Hertfordshire

Royal Vibes (2023). Christell - Dubidubidu (Letra/Lyrics) chipi chipi chapa chapa dubi dubi daba daba. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68YK_d4VyfU [Accessed 15 May 2025].

Delliea (2023). CHIPI CHIPI CHAPA CHAPA. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbVefzdi7ww [Accessed 15 May 2025].

[criticalreflectionblog2025]

Unit1: Animate A Cartoon Fox

This is the first assignment I made as part of Animal and Creature Animation module. Being the first assignment, what I am tasked to animate was fairly simple and the rig provided was even simpler. The rig was a simple ball with some fox or beaver details on it with squash and stretch controls and a tail in the back with a few segments to wag back and forth. The task for this rig was to have the animal ball hop across the screen with it stretching as it went into the air and squashing as it landed.

 The assigned task was very easy to complete with how simple the rig was and how short and concise the tutorial videos were. However, I didn’t feel satisfied leaving it at something so basic, so I decided to add a bit more to help flesh it out a bit. Taking inspiration from a cute cat meme (Chipi chipi chapa chapa cat) I imagined a scene with the fox bobbing up and down to the beat of the music as the beaver hopped on screen and stopped to give a confused look to the fox before joining in dance. Blocking the scene was fairly easy with how simple the rig was but not having a tutorial meant any issues I came across had to be solved by myself and even with such simple rigs I did have some issues.

One issue I came across was having the beaver turned as he hopped towards the fox as it looked weird to have the beaver turn between hops as did having him turn 90 degrees in a single hop so I had him turn gradually with each hop so that he would arc towards the fox. There was a lot of back and forth with the angle and distance with each hop so that he landed right at the fox and at the correct angle. I had some issues where the hops would end up not turning enough to be at the right angle when it got to the fox, or it would hop too far and make the movement look inconsistent in render. It required a lot of manual editing with each hop so that it hopped at the right distance to look nice and at the right angle to reach its destination correctly. There was probably a more efficient way of handling this but I’m still fairly new to animation and don’t know all the techniques to improve the animation workflow. The hop still looks a bit off when viewing from certain angles but from the view it’s being rendered at it looks fine for what the scene needs to be.

              Another issue I encountered while animating this scene came from animating the dance on the fox. I didn’t think rotating a ball with some up and down movement would be difficult but surprisingly it was. The first issue I had was with how the rotation and up and down movement were timed with each other, initially I had them timed together at the same beat as the music, but it looked off that way with the fox looking like a disc being spun in a circle. The fix was fairly easy though, I just had to offset the timing on the rotation and up and down motion by a few frames and it looked much better. The bigger issue I had with the dance was with the rotation as the idea was to have the fox rotate side to side, but the rig got a bit confused with local and global controls and it ended up having some forward and backward movement which I didn’t like. I don’t know what exactly I did to fix this honestly, I kind of just alternated between local and global controls a bunch of times trying to figure out what was wrong and it kind of just fixed itself so yay problem solved. :)

              Pass that it was smooth sailing getting the animation done. I added a landscape and some lighting to help set the scene and once rendered made sure to add the ever-important music in editing to help cement everything. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the results of this animation, I’m a bit surprised I had some issues with something so simple, but most things aren’t as simple as they seem. I was able to work through these issues and was able to make something that looks very nice and is something I’m proud of.

Credits:

Ultimate Tail Rig, Provided by the University of Hertfordshire

Vimeo.com. (2025). Vimeo. [online] Available at: https://vimeo.com/842446678 [Accessed 15 May 2025].

Royal Vibes (2023). Christell - Dubidubidu (Letra/Lyrics) chipi chipi chapa chapa dubi dubi daba daba. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68YK_d4VyfU [Accessed 15 May 2025].