Chasing Tail Animation - Part 1

Hello all, finally I have re-gained my confidence to start animating again. It's been quite tough trying to mentally get back into the routine since my illness but never the less, I will continue to push ahead and stick with my goal in mind for this year.

I have decided from the flying bald eagle animation that I wanted to re-visit the Nico creature as it was thoroughly enjoyable to animate. So this month I have planned to make two distinct animations and both will feature the Nico rig. As titled, this Nico rig will have a dog like trait and what's one of the most outstanding habit which a dog does, it's chasing their tails. I chose to do this as I wanted to keep it very simple but also have that appeal of movement that I can animate from.

So as usual, I have looked at a handful of video references and carefully studied the way a dog chases it's own tail. So from the size of the dog, the duration of the spinning and the poses before and after. I won't talk about this in detail a lot as I believe the by watching the videos below speaks louder than what I type.

 



After this, I then isolated a particular dog that sort of have the similar build of the Nico rig that I will focus on, as I found that the smaller dogs tends to have a much more tighter turn compared to the larger ones. I then drew my thumbnails of the key poses that will help establish the chasing tail animation.

Dog Thumbnails - Sketching out the key poses



I had always thought about making an animatic after I had drawn the key poses so that I could get the whole feel of the timing and spacing for my animation. But, I have usually left this part out as I could just adjust the poses in Maya. However I think there is always that sense of urgency and anxiety to see whether or not your work is slowly piecing itself together. I then downloaded a free app on the App store called "imotion HD", which I recommend doing so. Reminded me back in 1st year at university where I had to use a similar software for my 2D animation.

  

Though the aspect ratio is 4:3 I still found this to be incredibly useful. I was delighted with the results of the app. The video is looped three times as I had shared this on instagram, wanted to see how well this would be received, so far positive.

 

I then went back to the thumbnails of my animation and then analysed and annotated areas where the squash and stretch would occur and when I would need to make the paw foot roll and peel off, from the ground. I then simply just coloured coded the up as green and down for red, to not over clutter my work. I found this to be useful and saved a lot more time.

 

Dog Thumbnails - Colour code the up and down

Dog Thumbnails - Green, up



Dog Thumbnails - Red, down

Dog Thumbnails - Simple Annotaions



 

Finally, I was ready to set my scene up in Maya to begin blocking out my poses for when I resume the project. So, I then roughly posed out my starting position of the Nico Rig and rigged up three camera angles into the scene. I want to make sure that I get a very realistic feel of the Nico and therefore not even had the very idea of cheating, something I have felt very strongly about improving myself as an animator and from reading Steve Jobs book. "The audience may not know it, but I will"- a very loose quote.

 

Nico Rig - Behind camera

Nico Rig- Front camera

Nico Rig - Persp camera



 



 

I feel as though I have finally begun to step up and stop going back into the old habits of leaving something half complete but, I must not lose sight of this new philosophy of mine. I guess only after this project is completed can I really have a say on whether or not I have improved as an animator.

 

Anyway, I will begin animating this in a couple of days time and not tomorrow because I have decided to go back to work. I'm really excited to share more about this project soon so stay tuned.