Final Animation and Final Thoughts

My final animation.

The first animation I made was the emoting one. I made sure to create a range of different emotes, sitting, eating, waving, jumping. The one I’m most proud of is the sitting, it looks really natural compared to the rest of the emotes I made. I made sure to take care to create a squash and stretch when the character was jumping, to make it feel more real. As when you jump in real life you crouch a bit first to get some height. Jumping with a straight leg is a bit weird looking, but fun to try.
I made sure to make the emotes feel natural and with the jumping I incorporated anticipation, the bend before jumping makes you anticipate the jump. I exaggerated the sitting position by giving it a personality instead of just a normal sit, it made him seem like he was lazily leaning on his knees.
The eating was difficult as I did not know where to put the ball once he ate it. So I just hid it inside his skull, no one is going to see it so it makes it look like it really disappeared. I do wish I had figured out how to open his mouth but as this model did not have an internal part I would not have been able to do that. I would like to have added a lot more expression to him.
I would also add a bit of tiredness after jumping, to make it seem more real, as if he had used to energy doing it. With the jumping I made him swing his arms a bit as a secondary motion.

I tried to make the motions look fluid by structuring key frames accordingly, some parts of the animation speed up or slow down which makes it feel rough. I think the second attempt was better for this.

The second animation I made was the walking one. I struggled a bit with this as making natural looking walking is really difficult. He is a bit slow but since he’s an alien anyway I think it suits him.
I used the walking reference given on canvas for the leg positions. Even though I tried to make my own it was a lot clearer in showing how to raise up the model as the legs bend, which I had not thought about until looking at a lot of examples. I was going to make his arms swing to add realness but as a style choice and to go with the alien creepiness I made him hold them out like a strange sort of doll. Instead of this what I should have done is make them swing slightly to show a motion as he moves. Bodies generally do not stay still.
I made sure to have different cameras render, so I had 3 different views of him walking to show how he moves.
The walking in the end looks really rough, to smooth it up I should have made it over more frames to make the motions seem more fluid.

For the third animation I made him raise up on his feet a bit and swing his arms around like someone would do when standing still. I made him stretch a bit in a sporty way. He has very long legs maybe he likes running.
I made him catch a ball and throw it which was interesting. I had to do it frame by frame so the ball looked as though it was actually in his hand. I thought this looked really funny when I made it so I kept him staring at the camera. As the ball falls I made his eyes follow it. I intended to do that for where he was throwing it to but it added way more character to have him stare at you while his wrist flicks the ball away. Overall I think all the animations moved too fast and too slow at the same time.

I made him finish off by nodding at the camera and having a little sway. I ended up quite endeared to the little guy.
I found it really interesting characterising a model that was not something I made myself.

Overall, though I ran into a lot of issues rigging and the animations didn’t turn out perfect, I learned a lot about joint rotation, animation principles, and how to bring a character to life.

I had very bad time management when making these. I need to improve on this considerably for future projects. I really wanted to add some sound effects, lofi music that I made myself, and some jumping and walking sounds for when he moved. I think sound would’ve added a lot more character to the scene. I also wanted to figure out how to at least make him blink, so he doesn’t stare at you with those cold dead eyes the entire time.

If I had used my original character, with backstory, I think these animations would have been very different. I would have had him fighting, walking through the snow, and different props other than balls. I would have had the bonus of creating a rig for the fingers, and making the hair flow and sway as he walked to create a secondary motion. He also had a tail which would have wiggled as he moved. His walk cycle would have been drastically different to the one I made, as he had goat legs. I thought it would look like prancing or dancing across the snow.
I would have loved to have added footprints and looked up a few guides on how to do it but I decided to focus on the movement of the character itself as a priority.

I think there is a lot of character in what I created but a lot more that could be added. I look forward to experimenting over summer!

References:

Academic Phoenix Plus (2019) Rigging for Beginners: the Spine in Maya [Video] Available Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZQPqNLGoWY [Accessed 02/07/2022]

Nassim Briedj (2016) A person jumping straight up / 3D animation [Video] Available Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTGxHSMqD3E [Accessed 14/07/2022]

Scott Xiong (2010) The Importance of Joint Orientation [Blog post]. June 9th. Available online: http://scottxiong.com/the-importance-of-joint-orientation/ [Accessed 01/07/2022].