Walk Cycle Exercise

In this exercise, we are required to animate a rig to do a walk cycle. The walk cycle must include all most of the animation principles, which were taught to us by our tutor. The principles are mainly 'ease in and ease out' and 'anticipation'.

For example, when the legs are moving upwards, it will slow down and when the legs are moving downwards, it will speed up. This is because of gravity.

Examples of my work is shown below:

Video 1: Front-view of Walk Cycle Animation

Video 2: Side-view of Walk Cycle Animation

Video 3: Perspective-view of Walk Cycle Animation

Video 4: Front-view of Walk Cycle and Box Jump Animation

Video 5: Side-view of Walk Cycle and Box Jump Animation

Video 6: Perspective-view of Walk Cycle and Box Jump Animation

Big Dog Exercise

Video 1: Big Dog Kick Start Animation

In this exercise, I have put what I learnt to the test. For example 'ease in and ease out' and anticipation. The 'ease in and ease out' can be seen on the legs, when the legs are lifted up, it will slower than when the legs are moving downwards to maintain balance. This is mainly because gravity is acting on the legs. I also added anticipation into my animation at the beginning and the end. The slight movements at the beginning and at the end will lead the audience to what is going to happen next.

Figure 1: Big Dog Animation StoryBoard

Weight Shift Exercise

Video 1: Spidey Weight Shift Animation

In this weight shift exercise, I learnt many important concepts of animation. The important concepts that I learnt are:

Key extreme poses
Key extreme poses are key frames that are the most critical positions of the character. These key extreme poses best describes what the character is doing or experiencing. For example if we go back to the bouncing ball exercise, the key extreme poses will the highest points and lowest points of the ball.

In-betweens

In-betweens are key frames placed in between key extreme poses. It helps to enhance the animation by tweaking the animation to make it look more realistic. In-betweens can help incorporate 'ease in and ease out' into your animation, which will be discussed down below.

Straight ahead method
The straight ahead method is the easy but tedious method and not much planning for the animation (storyboarding) is needed to be done. The straight ahead method is to set a key frame one after another, hence resulting in a lot of key frames at the end. If a change is needed to be done in the animation, everything after the change will have to be re-done as well. Hence, this method is not as efficient as the pose to pose method which will be discussed down below.

Pose to pose method

The pose to pose method is by a more complicated but more efficient method. This method only requires the key extreme poses to be set in and then after that work on the timing and in-betweens of the animation. For this method to work, a lot of planning is needed to be done. For example, all the key extreme poses will have to be drawn out, for the animator to visualize. This method is more efficient because if any changes are need to be made, the animator only needs to tweak the key extreme poses or the graph editor, and the result of the animation will follow suit to the change.

Ease in and ease out

Ease in and ease out is to help the animation to look more realistic. Ease in and ease out describes inertia and gravity. It can be done by going to the graph editor and tweaking the tangents.

Anticipation

Anticipation usually occurs before the character does a movement. Anticipation can be a small action done by the character that leads to a larger and more exaggerated action. It allows the audience to follow the character and get a clearer picture of what the character is doing, rather than immediately jumping into the action without warning. Hence, anticipation helps to make the animation look more realistic and it is one of the key principles of animation.

Rigging Exercise

In this exercise, I learnt a few techniques on rigging. Firstly, use the joint tool to create the skeleton of the model. Keeping in mind the anatomy of the model, where I place the joints is very important. After setting up the skeleton, I will move on to naming every single joint of the model.

Next, using the orient joint tool, I will have to make sure all the joints are oriented in the right direction, if not many difficulties will be faced later. I found this part the most difficult to grasp, as you have to now which axis to select.

After every joint is oriented in the right direction, I moved on to setting up the controllers for the legs, arms, hip, spine and the head, constraining every controller to their respective areas. I found this part the most confusing and got stuck at the elbow controllers. I solved this problem by consulting a friend and looking into his rig.

Lastly, I skinned the model to the skeleton and did the weight painting. The weight painting was tedious and I found out that it had to rely a lot on my artistic instinct. As my artistic instinct was extremely limited, the result of the weight painting did not turn out so well, resulting in some parts of the model folding in an awkward manner as I move the controllers.

Overall, I found this exercise extremely enriching and useful. I feel that in this exercise, I have only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of rigging. I would definitely look up more about rigging to improve my rig. 

Figure 1: Reference image 1

This is the reference image for the first pose. It was taken from http://yourpaperboats.blogspot.com/2007/06/swan-lake.html

Figure 2: Pose no. 1

Figure 2 shows the first pose that I did with the rig. The pose is fairly simple to do, as it is just a few translations away from the T-pose. This pose stretches the four extremities of the model, thus I find this pose quite relevant to this exercise, whereby it really puts the rig to the test.

Figure 3: Reference image 2

This is the reference image for the second pose. It was taken from http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/06/dance_around_the_world.html

Figure 4: Pose no. 2

Figure 4 shows the second pose that I have done with the rig. Once again, it puts the rig to the test but maintaining the elegance of the model at the same time. Hence, I chose this pose.

Figure 5: Reference image 3

This is the reference image for the second pose. It was taken from 

http://sarah--says.blogspot.com/2011/02/in-past-life.html

Figure 6: Pose no. 3

Figure 6 shows the last pose that I did with the rig. From the pose, you can clearly see the reverse foot lock in action.