Transitions

My fourth assignment for iAnimate was a focus on transitions of movement.  It's easy enough to create a run/walk cycle, however in real life it's quite rare that we move in a continuous even fashion for long, and even less so in Animation (unless you count the intro sequences to bad anime - which I don't and you shouldn't either).  The most common shot we'll find in animation and what also happens to catch the eye the most is the transition, whether it be from a walk to run, run to walk, walk to stop, stop to run, whatever... you get the idea.

The Snippet this assignment was a look into how the head and neck move with relation to the body.  In my lessons here I was quite surprised at what I learned.  The neck turns much more than I was expecting the head turns far less.  Using what Stephen Melegrano taught us, I managed to produce an animation I'm quite satisfied with.  Before, using earlier rigs such as Morpheous, I couldn't get the head to behave believably, the neck always felt flimsy to me and I really didn't know where to go to get it to stop behaving like a chicken head.  With a closer examination of the head in this snippet, I now have a full understanding of the physical capabilities of the human-like body.  I felt comfortable enough towards the end to start experimenting with some facial animation and while it's nothing special, Stephen did commend me on the animation within the eyes, stating that I had none of the issues people typically have when beginning facial.  He liked how I was constantly adjusting the the upper and lower lids to be in synch with the irises as well as the offset in the blinks.

The lighting isn't great, but I'm no lighter and still learning in that area, but I felt that it helped make the scene feel better.



For my transition assignment, I decided to go with a run to walk exercise.  My character would enter screen left and exit screen right.  This actually presented a challenge that was unexpected but is actually a very common issue: continuity of the shot.  I could not see the poses before or after my character (in this case George Stevens from iAnimate) entered and exited screen respectively.  The reference also did not contain any useful information, so I was required to figure out where my character was in order for him to flow smoothly and life-like with the rest of the animation.  The best way for me to go about doing this was to plan it out first.  I analyzed my reference video, and found all my contact poses and indicated my passing poses.  The drawings were simple, but I knew that if the simple collection of drawings I drew could convey the motion, then I was on the right track.

When I was satisfied  with my poses, I entered into Maya and began to block in my animation.  For the most part, it all went pretty smoothly and I'm pretty happy with the progress I was making.  My biggest issues were in the lean back, it was actually quite hard to get him to lean back and have a believable drop in momentum, and even now I still feel that George isn't slow enough when exiting frame.  With that being said, this is by far the most satisfactory run and walk I've created so far.

I can certainly give a little more time to work on this, but I do have other animations to clean up as well as a new assignment tomorrow and I'm excited for it.  My first in-depth look at quadrupeds and creatures that we can't act out ourselves.