6 First weeks of work
Week One Reflection 25/09/23-02/10/23
During this week I worked on the bouncing ball animation both in 2D and 3D using Blender. I struggled with both of them but 3D more than 2D. This is because I could not zoom into the ball to make sure it was correctly squashing and stretching.As well as my ball was going underneath the axis and not knowing how to fix it until I saw the lecturer this morning So I put all my focus on what I knew better, which was the 2D.What was messing me up was the shape of the ball and how many frames I needed to have. After revising many times I have a good outline and will focus on the design aspect this week. I used Blender for multiple consecutive hours this week which was not the case at my old job. I would only get to mess around with it during the slow periods of the news day. So I feel all this time given has only improved my knowledge of the application. As well as getting constructive criticism from the lecturer has definitely helped in my progression as an animator. For the past two years I only had my own opinion to go off of for my work. In the news there is no time for most criticism. You would only hear any feedback if something was horribly wrong with the package or if someone said that it was extremely well done. So I am excited to see how getting multiple professional opinions will improve my end product.
Week Two Reflection 03/10/23-09/10/23
In week two we have focused on the Pose to Pose movement of a character. I have chosen to use the lecturer’s 3D rig for this assignment. I think it would be easier to understand the concept with a body already created then making it from scratch in a 2D program I am unfamiliar with. But easy is far from what this project was for me. My person is doing three different yoga poses during the duration. Getting the computer to understand what exact movements I want to happen is like asking a child what their school day was like. The answer is always just good, nothing more nothing less. Once the keyframe was set, that's where the answer came into play.The child understands what you are asking about and it registers in their brain just the same as the computer but when you get into the specifics that's when confusion begins. Adding the in betweens is like asking “what did you learn today? Their response 99% of the time is I don’t know.The computer sees what the next motion is but doesn’t think of it in human skeleton terms but how it can get that body part here to there in the quickest way possible. Which is what I have been struggling with all week, how to make my character look lifelike, not robotic. As I continue to understand what each of the rigs do and learn more about the program itself, success will come with perseverance to get the end product I want.
Week Three Reflection 10/10/23-16/10/23
For week three we went through the walking and running cycle. The lecturer walked us through the walk cycle in the tutorials on Blackboard. The run cycle was what had me a little confused. I got through the first seven frames just fine but I found it difficult to then reverse the action in later frames. It may have been because of my perception issues but it definitely took longer than it should have. The switching of the legs and not being able to rely on the playback feature to notice what was wrong like I did on the walk cycle. Along with having to do another contact pose after the 7th frame to have it add up to 14 really threw me a loop. But after focusing on it for a good while and going through all the details precisely I can say that my guy is definitely running in an accurate human depiction. In regards to my pose by pose animation the lecturer helped me get the guy to stay on the X axis and to smoothly transition between poses.I continue to make the body movements more lifelike through the adding of keyframes. The lecturer suggested I work in the graph editor but it seems pretty overwhelming with how many lines there are controlling so many different limbs. But it probably would have saved a couple of headaches instead deleting keyframes then re-adding keyframes. I will explore the graph editor if the lecturer has any criticism relating to the walk cycle since I‘m way too far into the pose to pose.
Week Four Reflection 17/10/23-23/10/23
During week four we were told to give emotion to a sack of flour. So I have mine doing a combination of the Cha Cha Slide and Cupid Shuffle. I wanted to practice the walk cycle once again so why not have a sack of flour do a line dance. I do not know how to add music to a blender file so the arms of the flour are clapping every five frames to create that sense of rhythm. It turned out well and I learned how to duplicate my keyframes and reverse the action. Which saved me a lot of time and allowed me to move on to the next project. My running cycle from last week needed some work. The knees were lifting too high and with some adjustment it now is not as choppy as before. As I moved onto the Body Mechanics exercise I knew then that the walk cycle was not going away. I still have to fix the timing of him walking up to the boulder and making the pushing look realistic. Which has already proven as not an easy task already.
Week Five Reflection 24/10/23-30/10/23
This week I had two projects to complete the origami boy pushing the rock and him making a hoop. The harder one would definitely be the one I started with which was him pushing the boulder. Timing was very essential in these exercises which is expected with the course name. Making the boy have a natural walk up to the boulder and him then pushing it was done through the placement of the keyframes. The first exercise took most of the week and once I had moved on I had much more knowledge of making the origami boy do whatever I pleased. I also got to work with the child of constraint tool again. It helped with the placement of the hands in both exercises. But I don’t know if I’m using the tool to the best of its ability because I had a lot of keyframes back to back so that the hands did not get lost within the objects.
