Month: December 2022

In this character design class, we got to create character design components of our own, which was a very exciting journey. There are many things that we learned about creating a character, such as the elements of shapes, lines, colour, and the more technical aspect like creating the silhouette, values, design sheet, turnarounds, expressions, and poses. The time constraint that was given also taught us about how to work and draw efficiently. Also, I tried not to be too idealistic about the character that I design and focused more on getting and doing the process right.

In the process of creating my character, the one that I struggle with most was the turnaround, because the shape of the hair was asymmetrical, and I lacked a clear vision of the overall shape from a three-dimensional standpoint. So, I was advised to create a 3D model of the head to help me revise my turnaround. I could say that I am quite satisfied with how the 3D model turned out because I was not sure that what I imagined of the hair was doable.

Another session that was challenging was when we were asked to draw the poses and expressions, mainly because of how limited the time was. But the feedback that was given at the end made it more clear to me how important lines, angles, and shapes are in the design of a character. For example, in my character, I combined the uses of hard and soft edges and I was advised to emphasize those elements so the character would be more clear shape-wise. Also when creating the poses, It was better to make a big pose that you can easily read even when it is just the silhouette.

In this post, I am going to talk about the mood change walk and animal walk cycle exercises, which probably contend with each other as the most complicated animation exercise that I have done yet.

The first exercise was the mood change exercise. We were asked to create a walking character that reacted to something which prompted the character to walk with a different mood. We all started with learning the basic walk cycle and the keyframes. After that, we shot some footage for our reference and then work on the exercise. For my mood change walk, I decided to do the mood changing from happy to sad. I would say that for the happy walk, it was easier to spot the keyframes from the reference footage because the movement was bigger and clearer than the sad walk. I also notice that in my animation there is still something that makes the movement looks odd, especially when and after the mood changes, so I would have to go through the frames again and try to improve the animation.

The next exercise was the animal walk cycle. In this exercise, we were given a day to observe and do life drawing of dogs to understand more about how they move and how they are built anatomically. I found this exercise very exciting but also quite complicated. I would say that I struggled the most in creating the right timing of the walk, and to be honest I still don’t know whether my animation could pass as the right dog walk cycle. I started with a walk cycle that I created based on a “standard” keyframing that I found in an animation book. After that, I tried to create another version based on real dog video footage. I found that even though the walk cycle that I do based on the book felt more even, the one that I did based on the video reference does feel more natural. Though I noticed that there is a slight limp in my animated dog, so I would have to go through each frame again to improve my walk cycle.

In this CGI Pathway, we learned how to do animation in Autodesk Maya. We started from the very basic, such as getting to know the interface, how to save and create a file, the shortcut keys, etc. In the first week, we were introduced to Bonky ( the pink bouncy character). We learned how to animate the character by making it move, bounce, and react to a T-Rex.

After that exercise with Bonky, we got to know Binky and learn how to make a walk cycle and mood change. Binky was a more complex character to work on than Bonky, but there are also more possibilities in the movement and expression. To be honest, I still find it difficult to make the walk cycle, thus more learning time is needed.

The exercise that I found most enjoyable was when we learn how to lip-sync. It was interesting that we were given the same audio and yet each person creates different movements and narratives. I could say that I am interested in a subtle performance, where sometimes the movement is small, but the teamwork of these small movements of body parts and expressions still well communicates the story and how the character felt. So, I tried not to give the character too big of movements, although creating this subtle performance was quite hard because the character does not have complete expressions as a real human does.

The next exercise was to make one character react to the other character, which then prompted the mood change in their walk. In this exercise, I want to make a giant Bonky, but the scale feature was not enabled, so I shot the scene in forced perspective.

Overall, I enjoyed the class week by week. I would say that probably learning how to animate these Binky and Bonky characters with the rig controller was not as complicated as I thought because they are well made (Thanks Kevin!). So, I am excited for when I get to learn how to do the actual modeling and rigging of my own character.

After living a quite sedentary lifestyle due to the pandemic (which I am not proud of), this class was quite a shock to my system, in a good way. I could say that this was one of the classes that I’ve been very curious about.

There are some interesting topics that we learned from this class. The first one was about Laban efforts, which consisted of punch, dab, slash, glide, press, flick, wring, and float. I think that the understanding of Laban would help us as an animator to be more familiar with movement vocabulary and how to assign these qualities to build our character.

The next is about the seven levels of tension. Where we learned about different levels of tension in movement. These levels are:

1. Level One – basically no tension at all (Catatonic). In learning this Level one, we got to be paired up and try to understand how the body is when there was no tension given, by moving our partner’s body when they are relaxed. 
2. Level Two (Californian) is when we gave minimal effort and are super chill and laidback in moving, like a drunk person or a zombie. 
3. Level Three (Economic) is when we give just an economical effort to do things, basically a straightforward movement. 
4. Level Four (Alert) is when we become more alert and aware of our surroundings.
5. Level Five (Suspense) Is when we are more reactive and responsive to our surroundings, like those feeling when we are scared or tensely waiting for something to happen. 
6. Level Six (Passionate) Is when everything explodes, where the emotions are let out. 
7. Level Seven (Tragedy) is when the emotion and tension are at the highest level that the body goes very still.

Another acting exercise that we did was to understand how the changes in body parts’ movement and angle could build different types of walking for characters. It was an interesting and a funny sight to see everyone improvising a Character walk. The walking exercise is continued by reaction or mood change exercise, where we acted out a reaction scene moment by moment. These moments that built the reaction scene are: Stopping, Looking, Reacting, Checking your surroundings, Leaving/Changing of mood.

I feel like I learned a lot by being in this acting class. Sometimes it may not be the most comfortable position to find myself in because I am quite shy, but through the weeks I got more comfortable doing the exercises, which is a good thing.

In one of the Monday classes, I got a chance to try creating a stop motion animation with an armature. The exercise that we did that day was the lift, push, and pull exercise. To familiarise us with the process, we were asked to create a simple animation of the character reacting and waving. After I finished with the waving animation, I continued with the lift animation. It was quite hard to do in the beginning especially because I kept bumping into the desk and ruined the scene. So apparently your awareness of your body and your space is something important in stop motion, which was an interesting notion to grasp on that day.

Another thing that I got of from this experience was that in doing stop motion, it is better to have a clear vision of what the frame-by-frame would look like because it would be hard to create new in-betweens after you have shot many frames. Overall, I would say that I enjoyed doing the stop motion exercise because I got to learn new things and it felt like some sort of dance between me and the puppet. Which was a bit of a weird analogy that I could think of when looking back to that day. But yeah!

The first animation exercise that we did in this course was the bouncing ball. I remember how frustrated I was on my first day working on this exercise and it got me quite a long time to grasp the basic understanding of the exercise. In my very first bouncing ball animation, I had no clue how to do spacing and timing, so the animation felt too even and too stiff. I remember that I spent my weekend watching many bouncing ball videos so I could get a better understanding of how to approach the exercise.

This exercise was then followed by the follow-through exercise, which I could say was quite the moment when I kind of finally “get it”(kind of). I would not say that this eureka moment propelled me in a way that makes working on these exercises easy. But it does simplify my thought process when we were expected to create the bouncing characters.

The next exercise was the Lift, Push, and Pull exercise. I did this exercise in three different media, which are stop motion, paper, and digital, so I could get an experience in working with each media. On my first day of this exercise, I got to do it in stop motion. The first thing that we all did before starting the exercise was to shoot a video reference. After I got the reference, I tried to sketch some frames which would help me pose the armature.

For the week after, I got to do the exercise on paper. For this one, I used both the video footage and my stop motion animation as a reference. Later, I worked on the push exercise digitally.

Personally, I didn’t find one media to be better or easier than the other. I think I enjoyed trying all of them. Although I did miss the undo button when working non-digitally. Regarding the output of my work, I would say that I am not truly satisfied yet with my work on this exercise. I feel like something is missing from my animation, maybe it lacked tension or anticipation or even suspense that you can grasp when you see a character putting their effort into doing these pushing, pulling, or lifting movements. So, it would be something that I will try to work on more.

Doing a proper life drawing class has been something that I’ve looked forward to for a long time. For me, drawing has been something that I’ve been doing intuitively, yet I learned from this class that we can approach life drawing based on its purposes. This reminds me of the classic design principle “form follows function”. For this class, the drawing served as prior communication data that will be used for animation purposes. Some of these data are gesture, flow, volume, etc.

From what I observed from my drawing, I realised that I do have some drawing habits that I need to minimize so I could adapt well to this class. For example, I tend to draw the figure part by part, that in my opinion, interrupted the flow of the gesture. And I also realised that just because the figure that I drew was clear in my eyes (as in the understanding of its volume, direction, pose) it may not be translated well to other people’s eyes, which meant that it doesn’t communicate well.

Week by week I tried to gradually change how I approach life drawing based on the information and materials that were given in the class, such as applying the beans principle, how to create the line of action, how to focus more on the flow of the gesture, etc. And I do see some differences and changes in how I draw. What is challenging for me is, every time I panic (Usually during the 30 seconds), my old habit is back. But this class helped me in these gradual changes, and I am quite optimistic that it will help me improve more and more.