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- This is going to be a work in progress and hopefully, each update will be posted as it becomes available.
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Before pursuing animation as a degree, I thought both 2D and 3D animation was wizardry and a whole lot of bippity boppity boop with a wave of a wand of a fine artist who trained behind under the tutelage of one of the grandfathered students of the Nine Old Men of Animation. Upon attending my first class, 2D Animation through my current class, Animation Production, I have gained a different perspective and a renewed appreciation for the work that goes into every single animated feature and live-action film.
Whether a drawing, a 3D asset or character, the animation is art coming to life. Within the animation pipeline, it begins with an idea-a research backstory of a character be it a person, an animal, a place or a thing. In the old days, the sketch then develops into a living, breathing character that moves, shows emotion, and talks to the beat of the narrative or the song the story is set to. My earliest memories of an animated film are the black and white filler films of the old days with a whistling Steamboat Willie, heart-shaped Betty Boop kisses, stuttering Porky Pig and carrot-chomping Bugs Bunny in the Merrie Melodies, and spinach-eating, Brutus-fighting Popeye the sailor man. No, it wasn’t that long ago when I watched these animated shows on a furniture-encased black-and-white, or should I say, blue-and-white television at my grandparents’ home.
This month, for class, we are working on creating a 3D animation clip to a quick four to six-second monologue. Work began with a video reference of me acting out a scene (over and over… and over… and over… you get the idea) until the monologue becomes natural. Being someone who prefers working behind the camera, this was a step way beyond my comfort zone. Below is the rough animation from the video reference I created for the monologue that I used in this month’s project. Coincidentally, this animation was created with the iOS “Rough Animator” application with an old Apple Pencil and an even older iPad Pro.
After setting up the file with props to match the video reference, I sat the character from its original T-Pose on the couch. From the rough sketch, and using a school-provided 3D character asset, I was able to create the following key poses in Autodesk Maya in stepped tangent.
Using the Graph Editor and Dope Sheet in Maya below is the process to add breakdowns before proceeding to the in-betweens. I took advantage of Maya’s efficiency in adding the in-betweens by selecting between key poses and setting only those poses to “Auto”, scrubbing through the timeline between my two chosen poses then keying my desired pose, then reselecting the poses and changing it back to stepped tangent. After then, I returned to the Dope Sheet and moved the newly selected pose into where I find it makes more sense based on the video reference.
When this process is completed, I performed a playblast in Maya to see the progress I have made. This video clip is still in stepped tangent and still requires further finessing with hand and finger positioning, lip-synching, eye blinks and grimaces.
Below is the Auto-Spline test of this animation in its current level of work.
…to be continued… Stay tuned. Thank you for your visit and see you again soon.