BIG THANKS!!!

Thanks for everyone who helped me on Term1！！！！

I choose a video of an assisted long jump as my reference footage. And I drop that into AE to add frame code.

Then output this video with frame code by quicktime format and import it directly on Maya camera. I start to block out the keyframe because this whole movement changing his focus very frequently so I need to notice about his central axis.

Besides I convert stepped animation to splines. I especially adjust the foot movement to the original video.

I like <Better Call Saul> pretty much, so I chose one line from Jimmy who is the main character of <Better Call Saul>. I really appreciated his performance in this play, as he took the character of Saul from a hesitant start to a disillusioned end.

Here is the line, speak out by him with strong incredible emotions. Besides through his body language, he exports his strong confidence to the audience.

In order to recreate Bob Odenkirk’s facial expressions as closely as possible, I imported the film into syncsketch for a preliminary analysis of the movement curves.

I found Bob Odenkirk’s emotions in this performance ranged from questioning and slightly angry to dismissive and confident. As a result, his facial expressions changed relatively widely in the first half and less in the second half, but with his face slightly uplifted and looking down at the audience, showing his confidence.

I then made the facial expressions in maya against the drawing on syncsketch. Here is the work.

I think overall it didn’t look as good as I would have liked, I was thinking maybe because the limbs and head movements weren’t added and the overall look wasn’t very coordinated. Also due to the source video, the sound and picture didn’t match up, maybe 1 or 2 seconds slower. I’ll try to fix that later on.

Gimbal Lock & Rigging a Camera Rig

I followed the recordings in the class and set a camera.

At the first time I was doubt why we need to set a controller for camera, after overviewed and finished the whole process I found that it is more easier to set camera animation especially add focal length attribute on that controller. In my previous work I used to change focal length on the process of sequences combination, but it is better to key that on animation process. I’ll be using this camera a lot in my future work.

CAMERA ANIMATION & CAMERA MOVEMENT IN THE REAL WORLD

• Pan Shot

• Roll Shot

• Pitch Shot

• Dolly (and Pan) Shot

• Crane Shot

• Focal Length(Contra Zoom)

PERORMANCE ANIMATION

I firstly re-performance Bob Odenkirk’s fantastic fragment. And I think in this slide my body language must send out a strong sense of confidence and unbelievable feelings. So I try to sit straight and look down the audience, then leaning forward several times to show my mastery and oppression of the conversation.

According to my own video, I have so little movement in my hands. As we know body language of the hands is also a very common communication technique. So back to Maya I need to add more animation on hands.

This is the final version, all looks good. And I specially used top light you can see the figures have distinctive shadows on his face to used to simulate an interrogation room headlamp. This deepens the character and aids his performance.

• WEIGHTLIFTING PLAYBAST

Firstly I used the footage same as class’ just in case this is my first time to animate body mechanics. The footage process is quite simple we just need to add the footage into AE or other video processing software to add a frame rate code. And I choose to output it by quicktime format( this is different to tutor’s, cause I could directly upload it on the camera plane, I think it’s more easier).

Then I started to block out keyframe. A useful tips for that we could paint the motion curve by Maya grease pencil tools to help us better control the center of gravity.

Finally I got the block out video

Weightlifting Render

• BODY MECHANICS

I use the same process as I told above, and find a good reference on a Youtube channel ‘endlessreference’ in this channel we could find so many useful references which got front and side view! So that we could animate more correctly.

And here is my footage

Here is the block out version

Finally I try to smooth them all and add break down keys for it.

Finally Render Version

Walking Cycle

The completed video of walking cycle.

Process:

• I set the 2 whole steps key frame which stand by left and right feet and copied the 1st frame to the final cycle frame the 25th frame. Then I got 3 keypose of walking on 2 feet.

• I added 2 Intermediate frames which was one foot standing, another foot curving a little bit as the key pose.

• Then set more keyposes like up and down keyframe to make the whole work more vivider. In this process we can also add squash stretch to exaggerate your performance.

• Until this moment I already got a whole walking in place cycle animation, then opened the graph editor and turn on ‘Infinity’ which is under the ‘View’ bottom. After that selected ‘Curves’ bottom chose ‘Pre Infinity’ and ‘Post Infinity’ cycle bottom. So that I could get a cycle animation.

• If we want to make our charactor walk forward, we must turn off the ‘Infinity’ option and same to ‘Curves’. Then we could creat a locator or cube whatever objects can be used to mark. And put the locator behind charactor’s foot to make sure every steps foot could be here. Same process for another foot.

• Finally we could select all controler and move to the final keyframe, copy and paste connect them all into the next frame. The whold walking forward done.

Locator Hopping

POSING CHARACTERS

1. I found a kick pose as the reference.

2. Another kick pose as reference

3.A martial prepartion pose

4. A kick prepartion pose

5. A martial pose

6. A standing pose

Then there are some MAYA screenshot

Ball&tail Animation

Good Examples

• One Punch Man

From 03:51 the whole battle images we could clearly saw that the whole camera moving’s rhyme from fast to slow. Firstly the guy got hitted the hit action and camera moving pretty quickly to display how stronger how enemies powerful. And then the whole action was presented in a flexible and stretching formed from this actor jump down to the ground. The same applies in the later battle clip main actor uses more keyframe to show his movement, on the contrary enemies moved so fast but quickly beaten. That is a good example to show squash and stretch and rhyme and space.

• Frozen2

From 00:23 to 00:25 this charactor quickly smooth to another side, could clearly see his movement rhyme from quick to slow. And when he began to move there was a small action his legs swung quickly just like a submarine, then he slid his hands forward to get a accelerated speed to move faster. That is a good example to show slow in and slow down and exaggerating.

• How to train your dragon 3

From 00:17 to 00:20 the character was turning the handle. When she turned the handle down the timing would be quickly because of the downward thrust and earth gravity. In a similar way when she turned the handle up the timing would be slowly because of the physics laws. So this clip reveal the timing use.