2023 CAGD493

Week 14: SPLINING

    

    My goals were to get more stuff out around this time and I actually only have two which both remained unfinished and ! that had to drop on polishing so I wouldn't end up with one thing to shower for the semester. I honestly don't think I really achieved my goals since it was a tall order for me to pump out multiple projects with two of them bridging unknown territory for me. 

    Some of the things that didn't work was having a project that I couldn't bring in for help. It was an mGear project so I couldn't bring it into class where I could have gotten much more of a push, but it was an older file and need an install which I couldn't bring to class or on my laptop at the time which was too low on space for another program. It also was the fact that I didn't lean as heavy on the reference as much as I should've. I had reference, but I would replicate poses how I saw them instead of analyzing the poses and the movement s being made. 

What I think did work was that I challenged myself. I did things that I was afraid of doing and did it anyway. I am not good at animating so I figured that I might as well face it head on. I also think finding something I loved was a good change of pace. I thought I always picked stuff I liked, but it wasn't until the last project that I felt motivated to make it look good because it conveys something I liked in movies.

If I were to do things differently for the flip I would have chose a simpler rig so I could have gotten more help on the project. I also would have referenced a actual scene from a game or movie so I could have a camera already made and spider like actions that I can just replicate instead of interpolate with a normal backflip. For the 2d animation one I shouldn't have attempted it just because it took time away from the Higher Path animation.

Week 13: Splining

This week I had to work solely on animating quality over quantity. The whole scene is 300 frames with two characters so it was definitely a longshot to finish all of it. I was instructed to focus on 20 frames at a time and not worry about getting all three hundred at once so only 78 frames is shown in the video. I blocked out the poses picked more cameras and started on fixing the spline movements of the big guy. After this class I definitely will try to finish this just on my free time. I wish I spent less time on the other two projects because I genuinely enjoyed  this more than the others. One of the challenges is getting the scythe to actually feel like it has weight and to make it actually look like he's looking at the scythe. So timing issues still need to be addressed and then I think I should finish off his wave and start all over again with the same process on the boy so it looks better when you watch it that both are animated and reacting to another. I also did a rough hand pass just to get a feel for the twisting motion of the scythe which I might need to tone done by deleting some keys and starting the poses from scratch. 

Week12:

Week 11: Poses

This week I needed to focus on getting the poses I wanted right. I recorded reference for it and got to blocking. I started posing the boy this week also, but as critiqued I will need to focus on the big guy again. I'm still trying to find a good idea and reference for how to wield a scythe. The idea was for the big guy to feel imposing but it was said it wasn't enough. The village pillage theme came off still which I was happy about, but I need to make the big guy seem like he is someone intimidating. I've been looking at footage of Gus from Breaking Bad and syndrome, but Neither really fit the aura he has. So I will keep looking. I want to keep poses him cleaning blood off his scythe but I cant find a good enough prop for reference or already made reference.

Week 10: Next next project

This week I shot reference for the actions I want the big guy to do. It took me a few tries to figure out the movements, but I think I'm satisfied with what I got so far. I think I will record a few more just for some more poses. I also recorded facial reference that I want him to make. Other wise I posed the characters in the scene and looked for a flattering angle and position for them.

 I struggled to do so at first because the first export I did had no ground floor. So I had no concept of where the characters are in space and why the buildings are not flat. I went into unreal and exported a new version with the terrain for more accurate positioning. The new terrain referenced in just fine.

I found the scene was a little to boring for me so I just enlarged a block and added a sky texture. This just helps me get a feel for the tone and its nicer to look at since the environment has no textures. I started off the animation with key positioning and poses. The big guy was animated walking just so I can focus on the rest of the animation and polish the walk later. I was able to get a nice looking playblast out of it and I think the few poses it really adds to the feeling I'm going for.

Week 9:

This week I decided not to do the fight animation. It felt like there wasn't enough time to complete and there wasn't enough time in the animation to feel satisfying. I didn't know which characters I wanted to have fight and the 3d part was going to be a first time for me so I'll do this project when there is more time for me to make mistakes. So I decided to move on to the next project that I was really excited about. The audio from training day. I started by sourcing the characters that felt right for the tone. I had to buy these, but I think it was worth it.

I also started sourcing environments. I was thinking about getting it from online, but I figured it would be way better if I got it from unreal engines library. I found a village and I think it fits the characters aesthetics nicely. The feel I'm going for is a brute father who is trying to coach his son through his first pillage. 

Week 7: Clean up and Next project 

This week I worked on the spider-man flip some more. I tried speeding up the flip because it looked slow. I also removed the fk-ik transition to make it look more smooth since the legs weren't doing what I wanted them to do when he landed. The feet would slide and his cog was off. To fix the cog I added a motion trail and adjusted his hips to make the curve more round and less bumpy. What's next is fixing that last pose and its transition from the landing and animating the hands. I also redrew the fight scene and progressed farther than last time. I drew the guy on the left more poses due to him remaining 2d. The guy on the right will be 3d so his poses are just markers if anything. I drew this in procreate and will export the frames out to match the poses in the reference video. 

WEEK 6:start over

This week I discarded my previous project file in favor of a new one. There was a ghost key I kept trying to delete, but I just couldn't find. I found this out because I was fixing the hips and all I had to do was re animated the legs and for some reason one frame would always be the same pose. If keyed over it it would  stay and deleting, baking, and muting layers also would not work. So I started from scratch and am making quicker progress than before. I think another week and a half then I can move on to the next project. In this version I decided to make it more spidey like. I added a pose in the beginning and Now I'm just trying to make sure I get the landing right and that his legs transition smoothly. After playblasting it I also realize that I need to work on the timing. Its only 30 frame which is way too fast.   

WEEK 5:Backflip issue

This week I found the issue with spidermans back in the backflip animation. I have now learned that I do not need to rotate as many controllers in the way that I have been doing for this assignment. Basically the issue was whenever he landed his hips would scrunch up. There are several controllers where the hips are and I rotated all of them when I could have got a away with just 1 or 2. This week I basically had to repose the legs because they were also sliding and the hips would reposition them.  But turns out there was an animation layer that still had keys and would make my animation look wonky. I tried deleting the layer and the keys persisted even though I could find them and delete them. I might have to restart and do it fast.

WEEK 4 :Backflip Fixes

This week I implemented some of the critiques I got for my animation. I added head movement and exaggerated some of the tucks and curls more. I also tried to fix the feet flipping out which I basically hadto do frame by frame since they spline wouldn't work. I am running into an issue where is hips are really rotated toward the end and the hop at the end either needs to be removed or needs a new pose. I stuck his feet to the floor just before he tucks in the air but for some reason his feet keep sliding below the floor and at the end of the animation. I can't find the control for his hip that makes that go back to normal and I need to repose his legs to get a cleaner result. I also started on the fight scene for jackie chan. I animated it in 2d, but since I started looking at the roughs I want to mix it with 3d. I wanted to do this scene in 2d and 3d really bad so I might just mix them together. 

Jackie Animatic

Spidey

WEEK 3 :Backflip animation

This week I started on the backflip animation and added poses. I got some advice on what to do next since I didn't know where to go from here besides fixing the feet. So basically I need to start offsetting keys and add some stretch on the feet after he lands from his hop. I also want to add a little more personality to him when lands so Ill be shooting reference for that so it wont look so mechanical.

 WEEK 2 :Preparing

This week was preparing the scene and finalizing the ideas for the semester. I have started on poses for the back flip animation and decided that the Naruto fight reference would be better as a 2d animation or scrapped in favor of a live action fight scene. Since I can worry about later I have rough idea of a Jackie Chan fight  from 2:06-2:09. The only thing left is to find out if the fight will be 2d or 3d and which rigs will be used. Other wise the dialogue scene I want to do is from Training day at 2:35-2:47.

WEEK 1 : Planning

This week is the planning stage for the rest of the semester. My goal for this semester is to get 3 animations. One backflip, an comic/anime action movement, and a scene with audio. I already have a backflip animation that I was not able to practice on during break. If I have time left I would also like to do a 2d animation on focus only the animation and linework since last time the coloring and background made it way too long for such a short time. For the comic/anime action I want it to be either be spider-man rig swinging or a find a new rig and animate a short action scene.

Backflip reference: Video

Rig:

Actions: (0:19-0:27) (0:14-0:19)