For Computer Animation we had to record our own motion capture data of a motion of our choice, clean the data, then bring it into Motion Builder and apply it to the provided "Woody" model. I decided to have some fun (and give myself a painful amount of cleanup) and learn how to do the Time Warp from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Here's the final result set to music.
Bonus photos of me dressed up in the motion capture suit:
I wasn't able to complete a finished render for Advanced 3D modeling (due to a ReelFlow licensing issue), so I changed gears mid semester. Instead of aiming for a final still image of a breaching great white, I decided to rig and animate my shark breaching. This was a challenge to say the least (I was simultaneously learning Maya animation tools in my facial animation class) and I ended up redoing the rigging from scratch. Here are some playblasts that I took of the breach from different angles. I've been trying out some different angles for breaching to find the right balance of drama (I want to viewer to feel intimidated) and readability (I want to viewer to be able to tell the shark is moving forward and twisting)
For my final project in Advanced Facial Animation I had to animate a scene with 2 characters. I chose the final scene from Some Like It Hot (1959). This is just a playblast, I'm hoping to render it out when I get a chance.
Modeling and Rigging done by Chris Landreth
Animation by me
For Advanced Facial Animation we've finally finished our first project, the first part of rigging facial muscles. We've studied the 14 major muscles of the face and had to rig 11 different Action Units. It's been a challenging class but I've enjoyed making faces at myself in the mirror. Here are some expressions I can make with my rig now.
The muscles I've rigged so far include: Mentalis (AU17), Triangularis (AU15), Labius Inferioris (AU 16), Frontalis (AU1+2), Currogator (AU4), Orbicularis Oculi (AU44), Aleque Nasi Labius Superioris (AU9), Labius Superioris (AU10), Medial Frontalis (AU1), Left and Right Frontalis (AU2L,R), Left and Right Squint (AU44L,R), Lower eyelid Squint (AU6)
(Made in about 30 minutes)
Back in January for my 6 month anniversary I made my boyfriend a hand drawn letter/animation. I'm not posting it anywhere (for obvious personal reasons), but I figured I would at least mention it because it was a fun experience. I ended up editing the final work to music which is something I hadn't done with animation before. Note to self: deciding to add music in retrospect is a lot harder than just animating to music from the beginning, but in the end it really help with timing. Here's once short gif to give a general sense of what I mean by animated letter (it is Valentine's Day after all):
I managed to get into the Facial Animation class I really wanted to take! I'm super excited for this semester, our first class with Chris was great. After only 4 hours I felt like I had a much better grasp of facial proportions and how to think about a photograph of a face in 3D. He's such a talented person and its such an honor to get to take this class with him, I'm glad I'm not missing out.
This is due in a few days, the final stretch! I have the general lineart and I'm happy with most of my motions, but the camera movements won't export for some reason (they're super important for pov shots that help progress the story) and there's still no sounds, backgrounds in some shots, or shading.
Current animatic for final animation. There's some sound, but due to issues with TVPaint I couldn't get all of the clips to work.
For my final project I'm animating the story of my dog Pickles learning how to swim for the first time, by being jealous and insane. I started with some gestural sketches to get an idea of how stylized I wanted the character to be. Then I cleaned up some of the line work to simplify the characters a bit, a played around with different poses and expressions.
I then did a test animation of Pickles running to see if animating a quadriped would prove to be more difficult than I could handle. I used video footage for the test run.
After showing my professor the run she recommended animation a movement without the use of video footage before proceeding, so I animated the test jump without a video. We both agreed that the animation I did without a reference had more character, so I decided that I wouldn't animated directly from video for this project. I still plan to use video footage, but I only when my action is from a different angle. This way it'll force me to understand the movement rather than just copy the form.
For our most recent Hand Drawn animation project we were given the first and last frame of a character animation and had to fill in the inbetweens, any way that we chose to. It was an exercise in creative motion and sticking to a humanoid character model that was provided for us. The animation had to be a minimum of 12 seconds.
Some things that I'd like to go back and improve:
-His proportions when he's on the ground and his legs are in front of his arms
-Adding more sticky stuff when he lands and generally making it stick around for a few frames longer
For our second assignment for Hand Drawn Animation we had to animate a flour sack emulating an emotion we picked from a hat. My word was "Timid".
Then for a secondary animation challenge we had to add a tail to our character. I chose an anthropomorphized rat tail.
This semester I'm taking hand drawn animation and I'm incredibly excited about the class. Here are just some very simple exercises I've completed so far.
A self portrait or avatar in 2 frames
Transforming one shape into another and back again
For this one I was inspired by the changing seasons. And the fact I wanted to draw a poor little determined snowman.
