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 |
-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.
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