Bird Animation -References and Theory - Part 1

Hello all, once again I am starting on a new project and I have looked at the list of animations that I have set myself for, and so far, I feel comfortable with what I will have at the end for my showreel. I did have a moment on whether or not to skip to just personality animations but, I feel as though I would be missing a key animation. So if you haven't guessed already, I'll be animating a bird.

As usual,  I will be animating a cycle of a bird so that I get the idea of how the body mechanics work and that I will get used to the rig more. Then later, I will take on challenge of making the bird land, as I progress, something I've been told from Cassidy Curtis, an animation supervisor from "How to train your dragon" that is said to be a difficult part of any flying creature. He explained how the folding of the creature wings and vice versa, is challenging.

So, like many animations, it's time to hit the theory and references.

I had thought about going back to Proffessor Stuart Sumida as he had helped animators in How to train your dragon but, I remembered from an animation workshop that I had attended back in November at the VFX festival in London, whom I met Alexander Williams. The workshop was how to animate a crow in flight and part of the source of reference he used as an Animator named Brendan Body, click the name to follow his work and tutorials. Anyway, I then used his notes on what he well explained on how birds take flight.

Bird Anatomy was one of the key areas to understand how the wings a bird moves.

Bird Anatomy- source

I won't explain everything and instead just bullet point some the important bits, but if really want to learn how to animate for yourself, I suggest taking a look at Brendan's notes as he has compiled some visual aid to help reiterate what he is explaining. Something that I don't do very well.

-Humerus- "forward on the way down and then back on the way up" - has a medial rotation

-Wings- As the bird moves downwards they are pushed forward and then rotate back as they return to the up position

- The slower the bird is flying, the further forward it'll push its songs to generate lift, the faster the bird is flying the less it'll push its wings forward.

Below is a very simple video of how a bird flys and how lift is involved. I really want to save the time for you guys to read my crude explanations and I thought that it'll be a welcome break. Enjoy.

I have found a rig online and it's a Bald Eagle and so you guessed it, I have been looking at a couple of video references of how these birds fly, hunt and even interact with one another. I then found a brilliant channel on youtube that has the national geographic wild documentaries of animals and will surely be using it as a great source of reference material, for other animal animations in the future.

With all the notes that I have written down and going over the video references I have to admit, that this is an animation that I will probably struggle on. Reason being is that, it's a flying creature that is going to be cycled in 3D space, where it won't have any contact on the ground, something that I have not done before. Just have to see how well I do as I get stuck into this.

I know I'm jumping the gun here but below is a free webinar with Alexander Williams next week, where he will be going over the process of animating a multi legged creature, something that I will be doing after this project. But for anyone that is starting to animate or wanting to learn how to animate a multi legged creature themselves, this is a good start. Get registering though! Alexander William Webinar

Anyway, I'm off and hopefully I'll have something substantial to show at the end of the week.

Heavy Character Animation - Part 4 - Final

Hello all once again, I know that I'm a few days late but better than late than never. I have reached the conclusion of this project and have had the extra time to think about my next which I'll talk about on my next blog post but for now, lets review the Heavy character animation.

I feel as though the weight of the character needs to be worked on a bit more, the reason being is that this character is holding a heavy gun which would strain some of the character poses from time to time even though, this character would seem to have no trouble of carrying the weapon at all. This has also made me think about my planning before animating again. So next time I begin animating a character or creature, I will provide a background history, so that I can get a sense of story and personality.

The jump when the character gets the courage to go out and fight, doesn't really work for me. I think I got the timing of it right but the poses, aren't exactly the best one, as it's kind of exaggerated a bit too much.

A point which I just want to make is that, this project was more orientated to a game showreel at the time but because of the complexity of the character story, it wouldn't seem ideal for a game asset. Therefore the next video below has different camera angles. Another reason for the multiple cameras was that it was to train myself to see from different angles of the animation that I was working on so, I didn't cheat. This proved to be useful and I would do this again for upcoming projects.

I remember the final project of my university course and as much as it haunts me of how bad the animation was, I now understand what my tutor "Michael Morgan" was talking about, how the performance of the character poses has to be done first, so that you can communicate to the audience on how that character is feeling. Rather than just focusing on the facial animation, which is another part of the animation. Even though I didn't animate much of the facial expressions for this project, I understand how the character is feeling nervous first, but then calms himself down to remember what he is doing.

My next project will be a creature animation and it's something that I can't wait to animate, but more about that later on the next blog post.

Heavy Character Animation - Part 3

I'm back. After having a week off from animating and working from my part time job, it was a welcome relief for my mind. That week off, really made me think about where I am at the moment and really exposed the flaws of my schedule which I have planned for this year. So, after carefully going about what to do now, I realise that I may have to one day admit that I won't become an animator straight away and instead, should find an equal passion that will drive me to become eager to work every day. I have a job in mind and it's something related to what I'm doing at my part time job but will be orientated around technology.

Anyway back to the animation. I have blocked out all of the key poses of the heavy character and have encountered a problem. It's something to do with the heavy character hands where once I have keyed the gun to discontinue the constraints, I'm left with the right hand acting as the driving force for the left hand, therefore I can not independently move the right hand as it still affects the translations and rotations for the left hand.

I had tried to figure a way out of this but was unsuccessful in solving this problem. Since the animation is going quite long, approximately around 40-50 seconds, I then had to review what I could keep and what I had to cut loose. As there is so much going on in terms of character personality, I then decided to keep the first 20 seconds of the start of the animation. I can then focus a lot more on this short section of what I had planned out from the start and make sure that the performance is a strong as it can be.

With that said, I have given myself this week to finish this project. Bit disappointed with the problem which I wasn't able to fix but, they'll be another project which I will try to resolve this problem. I'll see you guys next time, where I hope to have this completed and talk about my graduation day, which is tomorrow.