Through the feedback session this week, I changed my plan to keep the animation more reasonable and simple. I get rid of the confusing frog character and instead focus on the interaction between the mushroom and the main character. Here are my new reference:
And here is my new recorded thumbnails of the key poses in the shot:
Here are my notes of how to start the blocking of the shot in Maya:
Key poses to convey the story, set up the foundations of the shot.
Steps:
- Rough blocks (three poses, camera composition)
- Regular blockings (5-15 blocks)
-take my time
-Choices need to be good
-set poses
-Think of lines of action: draw a line through my pose and see where my line is taking me. One clear C shape is an example that clarifies the movement and creates a dynamic pose. Arcing my body to tell the audience where to look -thinking of the rule of the third (if we have two points of interest, especially)
FK V.S IK:
FK: more predictable, starting from the top to the below, each joint can be rotated.
IK: all about positioning the end of the chain, e.g. using it for punching.
Blending them during the movement makes the animation stronger; the character’s movement is made of mechanics and emotional expression. Ik could work when it raises the shoulder in the movement without raising the whole arm.
- Blocking plus (every 2-5 frames is going to have a key)
- Hit spline, s-blocking
Blocking Plus:
（Do not hit the spline!）
‘allowing the animator to approach the shot as a series of step-keyed poses right up until final tweaking’
Adding moving holds and copied pairs!
Breakdown:
- Breakdowns are different to Extreme Poses, extreme poses are showing the extreme movement in an animation, while breakdowns are showing the fluency of the transition between breakdown and key poses.
- Breakdowns are after extreme poses, they appear in blocking pass or splining
- Breakdowns are before moving hold and copied pairs!!!
- There are 3 types of breakdowns: 1. Classic breakdowns, 2. antics/overshoots, 3. Spaces
- Classic Breakdown = middle transition pose. It’s basically about what arcs we want and describing the arc motion.
- Anticipation and overshoots define the motions and arc further, and the weight of the character.
- Spaces help to define the gap (it favours the last pose generated by the computer, slowing down). Like what type of ease in and out we want.
- Resting to a move-> we need ease out
- A move to a resting state -> we need ease in
- Overshoot can be a change in direction, which needs an ease-in to the pose. Instead, we need an ease in to connect to a resting pose; the spacer pose would help.
Moving holds and copied pairs：
Copied pair: a technique creating those moving holds and making sure how long you want a key pose to be.
- Always used in the blocking stage of my animation.
- How long do I want my character to hold for a pose? (My pose then transfers to the next one)
- I can use Plateau tangents instead of the stepped ones in this stage to visualise the movement
- It helps to avoid floatiness
Moving hold: giving a slight change to a pose after several frames to make the character more vivid, basically to avoid the character looking dead.
- Characters hold a key pose to prevent them from looking dead
- Preventing a floaty animation in transition
- Each part balances the weight of the character
- We can add a moving hold on top of the copied pair
- When a character comes to a stop, body parts will counteract
- Moving hold is different from easing in & out; we could add easing in and out through Spline when the movement is being conveyed
- Secondary movement can be added through a moving hold to show the emotion
- Considering the character before adding the moving hold, do not do mechanical things in the scene!!
- Focusing on my emotions if I do this realistic movement—
Pipeline：
（开始）Start ➡ Key Pose （关键姿势）➡ Extreme Pose （极限姿势）➡ Breakdown （过渡姿势）➡ Moving Hold & Copied Pairs （移动保持 & 拷贝对称）【归在3D Blocking阶段】➡ Spline （曲线润色） ➡ adjusting In-Between （中间补帧）➡ Polish （打磨）➡ （结束）End
Animation & 12 Principles:
- Squash and stretch. The more you squash and stretch, the softer the character; the volume shouldn’t change.
- Anticipation: preparing the energetic action.
- Staging: control what audiences are looking at in my shot, either the rules of the third or the middle. Thinking of Mise-en-Scene.
- Straight Ahead & Pose to Pose: animating frame to frame or adding the middle frame later. Pose to pose can fix a lot of work, catching problems early on. (Keys 1, extremes 2, how far my character would go, breakdowns 3, how my extremes will connect 4 in between) 1-3 added in the blocking stage, 4 added in the polishing stage. extreme poses 通常指主动作本身的最极端时刻，比如跳跃的最高点、落地时最压缩的瞬间。Breaksdowns就是纯过渡
- ✅ Key poses是讲故事的”重要姿势”，
- ✅ Extreme poses是讲动作”物理极限”的姿势。
- Flow through & Overlapping actions, and drag*: the appendage will follow and then come back to the main body
- Slow in & slow out (add it during the polishing stage): Use the spline to change the frequency of the character, the object gets slow, fast and slow
- Arcs*: adding slow in & out through the spline (polishing stage), body moving to shape an arc
- Secondary action: Gesture that supports the main action!! It’s not the overlapping animation. E.g. facial expression
- Timing: The speed of the action will be defined by the number of frames between two key actions.
- Exaggeration: making the expression more dramatic and bigger, stronger. When the motion is quick, the exaggeration needs to be bigger to be noticed, otherwise, it makes the exaggerated pose longer.
- Solid Drawing: 3d dimensional drawing, draw perspective lines on the floor. Avoiding symmetry lines. Avoid Twinning, avoid symmetrical poses. Characters need to be balanced in the 3d environment.
- Appeal: characters need to be appealing, interesting to look at. A dynamic design. 1. Using a variety of shapes. 2. Playing with Proportions. Magnifying things we find interesting, shrinking things we find ugly or boring. 3. Keep it simple.
By reviewing the session’s demonstration, here are my notes:
Here is how we should parent constrain the body part to the prepared locator with baked information: