Animation

Modelling The Tin Tin moon rocket:

To begin understanding the modelling potential of Maya, I used modelling techniques including the extrude tool, inserting edge loops, multi cut tool and target weld to create the Tin Tin moon rocket.

I began by watching the tutorial a few times through video one and 2. I faced minor challenges where I would accidentally click a function twice and it would not perform what I was wanting to do. However, there were benefits to this trial and error as I became quickly used to the basic features of the UI. I was also able to practice using shortcut keys and learned how to move through functions quicker.

After building the first stages of the rocket, I felt there was an improved way of creating the rocket that would appear to be more aesthetically pleasing. Once I understood the dimensions and how the extrude tool would move the elements of the model, I was able to extrude the 3 panels coming out of the bottom of the rocket simultaneously. I wanted to achieve identical stands on the rocket. I initially did in the main structure and the angles between them although when it came time to pinching the tops and bottoms, I found it a bit tricky as it took a few rounds to find out the direction of the points directions ( It is difficult to explain this).

After watching the third video tutorial, I realised that it is possible to duplicate the arm extruding from the main body of the model. This is beneficial to have exact copies. I do not think my method of achieving the symmetry in design was a waste as I navigated a lot of the basics of Maya in doing so.  Above is a screen shot of how I pinched the corners of the underside of the extruding panels.

I learnt that if 2 objects are connected or in this case, 4 objects, you can click edit mesh> merge  which will allow your object to become one which is what I did so that Maya would treat the rocket as one object.

 

The image above displays colouring the rocket surface. This was relatively easy to give the whole surface one shade of colour. I managed to find the checker  selection on the colours but I could not figure out why this was not appearing on my own rocket shape. The tricky part achieving this at the end.

Questions.

How do you get the vertices menu too appear?

Why were there gaps between the extruded parts and the cylinder body of your model? My own model did not appear to have these spaces and so I did not have a chance to practice the merge vertices function.

The same tools were used in trying to recreate a cup and saucer.

 

To explore a new area, I attempted to create a rope. Although it was not a very successful looking rope, it did spark my creativity of the extrude along a curve tool usage. I imagined this could be used for recreating strands of hair, cables, rope or even insect legs. I also explored the edge loops tool which when manipulated with the move tool increases the potential shapes that can be created.

The 12 principles of animation were coined by Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in their book The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation published in 1981 (Johnson and Thomas, 1981).

The key animators worked alongside Walt Disney himself in creating leading characters, including  some of the best-loved characters in American culture; Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Snow White and Bambi. The book examines Disney animation from the 1930s onwards and boils their approach down to the 12 basic principles of animation, which form the basis of all animation work.

These principles are:

 

  1. Squash and stretch:

    Considered the most important, this action gives the illusion of gravity, weight, volume, and flexibility to a character when it moves. (Note, When using squash and stretch, it’s important to keep the object’s volume consistent. So when you stretch something it needs to get thinner, and when you squash something it needs to get wider.)
  2. Anticipation:

    Prepares the audience for a major action the character is about to perform. Each major action proceeds with specific moves that anticipate the audience what is about to happen. This principle gives the animation a natural and realistic effect.
  3. Staging:

    It’s the presentation of an idea so that it is clear. Staging uses motion to guide the viewer’s eye towards what is important in the scene.
  4. Straight ahead and pose to pose:

    Pose to pose is charted with key drawings drawn at intervals throughout the scene. This technique provides more control within the scene. Straight ahead animation starts at the first drawing and works drawing to drawing to the end of the scene. This action form is ideal for fluid, realistic movements.
  5. Follow through and overlap:

    This is when the main body of the character stops all other parts continue to catch up to the main mass, nothing stops all at once. (Note, not everything on an object will move at the same rate, this is overlapping action. When hair continues to flow after a character runs for example – this is follow-through.
  6. Slow in and slow out:

    As the action starts, we have more drawings at the starting pose, one or two in the middle and then more drawings nearer the next pose. Fewer drawings make the actions faster and vice versa. An example is a car starting, slow to start then increasing speed.
  7. Arcs:

    All actions with few exceptions follow an arc or a slightly circular path. Arc’s give animation a more natural action and better flow. For example, when you toss a ball into the air, it follows a natural arc as the effects of the Earth’s gravity act upon it.
  8. Secondary action:

    It’s an additional action used in the scene used as a supplement of the main one in order to reinforce it and add more dimension to the scene (Note, this secondary action should not distract from the primary one.)
  9. Timing:

    More drawings between poses slow and smooth the action, fewer drawings make the actions faster and crisper. Timing maintains the appearance of an object abiding by the laws of physics and makes it believable. this can be toyed with but the key is in being consistent.
  10. Exaggeration:

    Remain true to reality, just presenting it in a wilder more extreme form allowing the animation to push limits and really pop!
  11. Solid drawings:

    It means taking into account forms in three-dimensional space, giving them volume and weight. Limits can be pushed here too but there needs to be consistency.
  12. Appeal:

    It is a quality of charm, able to please the viewer’s eyes, its the charisma of the action. This includes having an easy-to-read design, solid drawing, and a personality. Start with strong character development and being able to tell the story through the art of animation.

Video of 12 principles (Coron, 2019):

 

Word count: 68 words

References:

Johnston, O. and Thomas, F. (1981) The illusion of life: Disney animation. Disney Editions. New York. 

Oh my Disney, Disney (2016) THE 12 PRINCIPLES OF ANIMATION AS ILLUSTRATED THROUGH DISNEY AND DISNEY PIXAR FILMS. Available at: https://ohmy.disney.com/movies/2016/07/20/twelve-principles-animation-disney/ (Accessed: 01st February 2020) 

Coron, T./ Creative Bloq (2019) Understand Disney’s 12 principles of animation. Available at: https://www.creativebloq.com/advice/understand-the-12-principles-of-animation (Accessed: 13th March 2020)

 

Bringing life to the lifeless:

The Flour Sack was popular as an animation test at the Disney studio in the 1930s because it was more organic in movement than a bouncing ball, focusing more attention to weight, overlapping action and how the sack changes shape over time. It also forces one to think about timing and how to make this object move realistically in animation (Keslensky, 2005).

 

 

Many animators still use the flour sack as a practice and warm-up tool. There are not any strict guidelines for the flour sack exercise, except to adhere to the 12 principles of animation.

Word count: 100 words 

References:

Keslensky, J./Tall Grass Radio Studios (2005) That Poor Misunderstood Sack of Flour. Available at: http://tallgrassradiostudios.blogspot.com/2005/05/that-poor-misunderstood-sack-of-flour.html (Accessed: 17th March 2020)

When light hits an object, part is absorbed, part is reflected and part is transmitted through. The appearance of a surface depends on these factors, however in Maya, the surface appearance is dependent on its shading. Some of the attributes of assigned materials include colour, transparency, and shine which are applied to the mathematical object (Autodesk, 2014).

Using the lighting and shading menu, I assigned new materials including Blinn, Lambert and Phong to the shapes below which were then manipulated using the attributes editor. The attributes editor and UV texture editor was used to assign texture map images to adjust the appearance of the texture on the object.

 

UV (the letters denoting the axis as X,Y and Z are already assigned) mapping is a process where the texture map is wrapped around the object.

Word count: 135 words 

References: 

Autodesk (2014) Shading.  Available at: http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2015/ENU/?guid=Asts_Surface_shading (Accessed: 14th February 2020)

A character rig is essentially a digital skeleton bound to the 3D mesh. Like a real skeleton, a rig is made up of joints and bones, each of which acts as a “handle” that can be used to bend the character into the desired pose. 

Creating cuboids and linking them through parent-child hierarchies to rank them, allowed me to group the objects so that they would move together. Below is an attempt to create a rigged set of objects to resemble a hand like structure. Re-naming the parts, positioning the pivots and locking the rotations were essential to making the object behave with a hand like motion.

 

(Dermot, 2010)

 

Word count: 108 words 

References:

Dermot C. O./ Angry Animator (2010) tutorial-2 : walk cycle. Available at: https://www.angryanimator.com/word/2010/11/26/tutorial-2-walk-cycle/ (Accessed: 18th February 2020)

 

There are 10 goals for lighting (Hixon, 2017): 

  1. Establish a setting
  2. Enhance or creating the mood of a scene
  3. Direct the eye
  4. Create the illusion of depth
  5. Create the illusion of volume
  6. Reveal the substance and qualities of materials
  7. Maintain continuity
  8. Integrate visual elements
  9. Set a visual style
  10. Create visual interest

(Golowczynski, 2018)

Arnold physical sky to light used to dusk and dawn atmospheres.

Balloon blowing in the wind.

Word count: 105 words 

References:

Golowczynski, M./Digital Camera World (2018) Cheat sheet: Pro portrait lighting setups. Available at: https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/tutorials/cheat-sheet-pro-portrait-lighting-setups (Accessed: 2nd February 2020)

Hixon, D./ECG Productions (2017) Why Light? Available at: https://www.ecgprod.com/why-light/ (Accessed: 8th March 2020)

Audio Clip

“Animation is particularly effective when it communicates with movement. But this potential can only be tapped when movement is given a meaningful role.”(Besen, 2008: 16).  The audio clip used in this animation was taken from the 11-second club archive called,  Crooning frog by Aju Adam  (The 11-second club, 2012). The audio consists of one voice humming a tune which I felt would allow me to use the lip-sync animation to a degree but the action of the clip would be guided by the movements rather than taking instruction from the words of an audio clip.

 

Storyboard

The storyboard is a key part of the visualisation process in telling the narrative through drawn pictures and to develop the story (Wells, 2006). The narrative centres on a cleaner sweeping a stage as the theatre is closing (dim lighting is used). He gets carried away by the music and allows himself to dance to the tune for a brief moment, until the music comes to a bitter end and he is reminded that he is in fact not the dancer, he is the cleaner (perhaps imagining a life he has dreamed of).

 

Modelling Set

Creating a convincing environment for the character established the scene and distributed important information into the props of what was happening without the need for dialogue (Beson, 2008). The broom, bucket, and wet floor sign indicate the character is a cleaner, whilst the stage and curtains show the scene is located in a theatre.

Play blast of curtains modelled with n-cloth:

 

Initial Pose

 

Lip syncing

To pose the mouth, I photographed a mouth recreating the phoneme shapes to give the impression the character was singing the tune of the audio (Martin, 2020).

Table breaking down mouth movements:

la ta tu ta la tu ta tu ta la ta tu ta ta ta tu ta
open x x x x x x x x x x x x
close x x x x x
wide x x x x x x x x x x x x
narrow x x x x x

 

Normal mouth pose
Ta sound
La sound
Tu sound
Eleven rig face

Phoneme shapes:

La sound
Ta sound
Tu sound

 

It’s generally agreed that you should animate body movement first and lip-sync second (Wells, 2006). This helps to focus on making the body communicate what’s being said before you begin lip-syncing.

Reenacting the animation sequence

Side view:

Posing

To create the animation, the key positions of the actions were blocked out whilst Maya was able to fill in the movements. Pose to pose animation, as opposed to straight-ahead animation, was used since it offers more control and allows for the in-between work to be defined while ensuring the animation will be hitting its key poses (Besen, 2008).

 

Lighting

yellow lighting/spot light
yellow lighting/spot light
Blue stage lighting
Blue stage lighting