Unit 12 - Character Animation

Anchor 1

Anchor 2

In this unit I've been tasked with creating an 11 second animation based on a sound-clip from the 11secondclub competitions.

To begin, I've first began to take a look at other media in order to understand what makes a good animation

The first animation I began to examine was ''Pocoyo''. This cartoon is based on snappy, quick animations that transition from pose to pose to express emotion.

The animation in this show works well as the context behind the action on the screen is not very in-depth but it is interesting enough to capture the children's, which is the target audience, attention.

When making my animation I should look into making the animation have a strong sense of snappines when expressing any action to give it an extra push in conveying the emotion im trying to portray however I have to make sure that when applying the technique of snappiness I do not make it too snappy and therefore make it look robotic as that would take away from the animation's realism

Another cartoon that follows the idea of snappy animation is ''Noddy''. The show implements a similar snappy style as "Pocoyo" however it seems that the animators tried to smoothen out the snappiness by adding keyframes in-between the poses. This has not made the animation any smoother and in fact because of the added keyframes it makes the animation look very flowy and incomplete.

When making my animation I must make sure that every action my character makes has a realistic flow and does not linger or stutter making it look unrealistic. As an added bonus, at the very beginning of the scene shown, the bell at the tip of Noddy's hat clips into the car that Noddy is sitting in and I must make sure that I do not make that mistake too.

The third animation that I've looked at was the trailer for "Monsters Inc." In this animation the characters have a casual conversation that is both engaging and realistic. The animators have made sure that even when a character is not the main focus he is not completely motionless and still has some idle animation making the whole scene more alive.
In this particular gif the animators made a smooth transition from making the focus of the viewer transition from one character to the other by adjusting just how much movement they make however even though the focus of the viewer has been moved away from one of the characters to the other they still made sure that the character that has been moved away from does some sort of idle movement making the scene more believeable.

When making my animation I must make sure that my characters do not stay completely still and always have some sort of idle movement to make the scene more lively and believeable.

Anchor 3

Joy

Knee Slide

Kung Fu Stance

Sadness

Pride

Despair

I've been tasked in using the ElevenRig to create scenes that convey some sort of emotion/message. Below, I've used different source imagery and created a pose based on said imagery using the body language and facial expressions to convey emotion. I've made sure that my poses have a strong line of action to make sure the poses express their emotion to the fullest. I've used lighting to help convey each emotion and I've also created silhouettes to show the lines of action.

Here I've attempted to make a realistic animation of my character turning his head from left to right. Turning a head seems to be one of the more simpler things to animate and yet the amount of work needed to make it look realistic is immense. When humans turn, their whole body responds with action and I needed to translate that into my animation in order to make sure that it does not look robotic. During a head turn the shoulders move accordingly to the head and the body shifts weight onto one leg more. The hands also move either forward or backwards to accompany the shoulders. A turning head doesnt simply move from left to right and instead it rolls on a pivot based around the neck. Ive made sure my animation represents that by including several keyframes in-between.

To make sure my eye movements are realistic I've made sure that wherever the head is turning the eyes lead toward that direction and that there is a blink in the middle of the head turn.

In this animation I've attempted to create a scene where a character walks in, picks up an object and then proceeds to walk out. This would cover both of my tasks set to me which were a walking animation and a picking up animation.

I've attempted to create a walking animation by basing it on several walk-cycle images and addin frames in between to smoothen the cycle out.

The animation I've created was not very succesfull, the walk cycle looks too robotic and when picking up the object the character makes some unrealistic snappy movements.

I realise now that tackling both animation pieces at once was not the best idea and I plan on creating an individual animation for both picking up and walking if I have the time available.

Here I've created a basic storyboard for my animation in order to guide myself when animating. The story is simple but effective and I hope to make a comedic situation out of the ElevenSeconds sound-clip.

This is the animation/sound-clip that I've decided to base my animation on. It comes from the Eleven Second Club April '09 Competition that can be found here: http://www.11secondclub.com/competitions/april09/

I've decided to use this sound-clip as it can be interpreted in many ways both seriously and comedically. Due to the lack of characters talking the animation is much easier to make as I will not have to worry about things like lip-syncing.

Above is the winner of the contest with a really smooth animation that I will take some inspiration from.

Here is the first preview of my animation that I have been working on, when finished I plan to render it out in Maya Software and adding everal different lights to create a good scene.

http://www.11secondclub.com/competitions/april09/winner

Overall I believe that the 11 second animation that I've created stays true to the source audio and portrays the emotions of the scene well. I believe that my animation has a healthy flow that does not make the actions of the character look robotic. I added some visual effects such as lighting or screen shake to add more emotion to the animation and I believe that overall those additions enhanced the experience. If I were to go back and improve the animation I would make the screen shake more fluid with the animation as currently it stands out a little too much, I would also go back and re-adjust the hand motions of the character to create better arcs when moving his arms as currently some of the hand motions may come off as too rigid. Due to time limitations I was not able to go back and create a different animation for both the walk cycle and the picking up an object animation and if given the chance I would create an animation demonstrating both separately.

Evaluation: