Easter Break - Week 2

Coming into week 10 I am pretty much happy with how my 4 animations are playing out. I keep making minor tweaks to each of the animations (especially with the walk cycle), however these are the renders of the the 4 animations below. I uploaded the render videos on my group Facebook page and team member Krzysztof said he likes the animations now it's time to start combining all our work together.
Idle:

Walk Cycle:

Pull out Sword:

Crouching:



Easter Break - Week 1

Slow progress this week due to my other module specialist 3D, which also involves me animating. In that particular project I'm looking into comparing Pose to Pose and Straight ahead animation. Back to this module, I uploaded the animation that I had for my final piece so far to my teams Facebook group. One of my team members Joe pointed out that at the end of my animation the sword my character is holding is facing the wrong way. However apart from that he liked the animation. This tweak would be very minor as I only needed to move his wrist slightly so the swords blade is facing the front.

Here's the rendered version of the edited animation. Comparing to the last rendered version of the animation, you can really see the difference and improves that last final pose. The next thing I need to do is look over my 4 animations and make sure I'm happy with how they look and play out and finally combine them all together.

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Above I have rendered the walk cycle I animated a few weeks ago. I've been making a few changes to the characters right foot. I felt the when the right floor is about to make contact with the floor the animation looks clunky and doesn't look as smooth compared to when the left foot makes contact with the ground. Also with the rendered animation, I have also displayed how we might present the walk cycle. As a group we thought it would be a good idea to have the walk cycle play out like this in our show reel, as moving the camera around will add variety to our show reel.

Week 8

This week I have made very slow progress with my animation due to big deadlines in other modules like Applied Game Art Project which we had a major Alpha deadline which we had to make sure we hit. So majority of the week has been spent on that.

Where am I up so far with this module? I have 3 animations pretty much done, with some like the walk cycle needing a few tweaks here and there. My final 4th animation I have started, the idea for the animation has changed slightly. Originally I was going to have my ninja character walking then turning when he hears a noise and pulls out his sword. However I felt that have the character walking then turning was going to be tricky to animate. So the plan is now to have the ninja character pull out his sword while in his idle pose. This animation will still take place before the opening the window animation. I feel this will be an easier animation to get done seeing how much time we have left to get every thing done in our groups.

When looking back at some of my previous animations like the walk cycle for the ninja, I felt that the animation could do with a few tweaks. For example when the foot is about to make contact with the floor with one of my characters legs it seems very rush and clunky. While watching the stop motion film ParaNorman, I noticed a key piece of animation that could really help me. I managed to break the couple seconds of animation into screen shots showing the up close walk cycle. Here this demonstrates how when his feet are about to make contact with the ground, he leads with the heel and the toes curl up. Whereas in my walk cycle the character feet at one stage just goes straight down. However once this minor tweak has been made, I'm pretty happy with how that piece of animation looks.

Here is what my final animation looks like so far rendered. There's still a lot more work to be done to the animation however I'm liking the way it's turning out so far.

Week 7

I used this week to continue working the animations that I have already started on in the previous weeks. First the walk cycle, I wasn't convinced that the characters legs were correct in the way they were positioned. I got my other team mates Joe and Krzysztof to give feedback on the animation. With the walk cycle the key frame timing was correct however, adjustments with how high the feet were being lifted off the ground needed to be changed. Once I did this the walk cycle was less force full and a tad more relaxed. When I was happy with how the animation was looking I went and started animating the rest of the body. Below is the rendered animation of the walk cycle for the ninja.

After went back into my into the crouching/opening window animation. I showed this to one to my group and feedback was that they felt that the animation needed to be longer. what I mean by that is so far the animation finish with the window moving and the ninja staying in the same stance before the window opened. This working in our scene doesn't make sense because if the ninja is sneaking and trying not be caught, once the window opens he would probably duck and hide. I added 24 more frames and have the ninja lower himself behind the window.