Lifting Heavy Objects Final

I know that this is a little late, but I was able to finish off the animation, which I had started a few days ago. The rendering process is taking a while, even as I type this, I have another set of render to be done. Anyway here it is (below)

As mentioned from a previous blog post, I had said that " this was a really challenging animation", I cannot emphasise this anymore. Though I may've been following the Digital Tutors tutorial, I've noticed, that when I was animating, certain parts were different to the one they had, compared to the one I was working on. This has therefore, left me confused and frustrated when I was trying to follow the tutorial video.

I then had to try and make the most what I had already blocked out and animated. So at times, I had to watch a video a couple of times and carefully switch back to my work, where I had to see whether or not if my seemed similar to the Digital tutors version. This then lead, my animation to look strange and sometime the movement of the character to be quite rigid. A-lot of work had to be done, by using the graph editor.

But, you know this was indeed a good experience and I've learnt quite a-lot compared to previous videos. For example, I understand why and when to add a follow through, or add an arc at certain points for the animation. I also realise that I need to learn more about "timing and spacing"where this is evident when the character celebrates. 

So, though this may've took a while to animate, I feel a-bit more confident to when it'll come to animating by myself next week. 

AndyCodex Animation

Lifting Heavy Objects Animation Part 1

I'm a bit off track this week as I've been a-bit ill, haven't really been able to fully recover and it's really having an affect on my concentration. Even as I'm typing this up, I just want to get some sleep. So, as you may've guessed from the blog title, this is an incomplete animation which I have been learning.

The video above is what I've been able to do so far, and before you say that the legs are missing, it's because I've turned them off. It's defiantly a good way to animate, as your not distracted by too many nurb curves.

Unlike the facial and walk cycle that I had done so far, this animation involved a character interacting with another object. This has therefore been really challenging, even at the early blocking stages for the extreme poses. I got frustrated and annoyed at some points, as my animation would not be the same as the Digital tutors guide. Though thankfully, I can see what was wrong by using the graph editor, and resolved most of the problems. 

I can only hope by Sunday that, I would have fully recovered and been able to finish this animation.  The reason being is the fact that I'm running out of time and Uni is next month. So I need to have learnt as much as possible so I could begin animating by myself and truly begin to learn. So I'll be posting part 2 on Sunday.

AndyCodex Animation

Walk Cycle

Well hello there again, I've finally got something done! This particular animation took me a while to do as part of the Digital tutor tutorial, was difficult for me to grasp and I had to keep re-doing the animation over and over again. Though this was near the start of animating, when I was blocking out this character. So it wasn't too bad.

I've learnt quite a hefty amount of useful tips during this tutorial, for example, mirroring the values of "xyz" from translate or rotation, which really sped up the animating part. Plus, I feel as though I'm more confident in solving problems with the animation by looking at the graph editor.

But, there were times where i would try to watch a video as fast as I could, rather than taking it all in, and realise why the narrator has done that in a particular way; as I really wanted to just complete this whole tutorial.

 So, in future, really, I should take my time and try to go through the video again, just to make sure i really understand what is going on. Anyway, I'll be posting more stuff soon, so keep an eye out on this blog.

AndyCodex Animation

Key Principles Animation

Well hello, it's been a while since i've done a blog post. I was meaning to post a few things, but I decided to wait until I had a reasonable amount of work to talk about. Anyway, from my previous blog post, I had just learnt how to animate a talking character with an audio file. Hungry for more knowledge, I decided to purchase a month worth tutorial from Digital Tutors. As many of the videos they have available, are the ones which I'm really keen to learn and brush up my skills.

Digital Tutors provided the scenes

So I then listed and planned out what I was going to learn and once that was done, I started without hesitation. The most important topic which I needed to learn was the 12 principles, which I found really refreshing to learn, from a 3D perspective.

They were some parts which I thought kind of dragged on, with the tutorials which I had planned out, but I think it was because I wanted to animate something and learn at the same time, rather than learn some tips and tricks on how to improve my animation workflow. Never the less, I found this really useful.

I'm a bit behind at the moment with the tutorials I had planned, due to work, and I had hoped by next week, I would start animating by myself and really start learning and applying the knowledge that I had taken from Digital tutors. But, I'm estimating that by the 19th of August I will start doing that. So keep an eye out with the work which I will be posting on this blog.

AndyCodex Animation