Evaluation

I've learnt loads during this project of developing my skills in character animation. I am happy that i have come to this point where i am capable of animating a character for my future production. I learnt again the animation principles which is important when animating and the maya Graph editor which was difficult and still is.

I found this unit very useful building up on my skills towards my final animated film.

Last Walk Test

Richard williams walk cycle sheet

Screen Shot in Maya

My Walk cycle Test 

Graph Editor

Maya Graph Editor: 

I found out that taking on board being a good character animator, that the Maya Graph Editor is really important if you want to get excellent results of your animation.

I also found out that the graph editor will be my main tool for manipulating the shape and timing of animation curves. I can edit the timing and basic tangent types in the Time slider, but the graph editor is the best place to view the animation curve's shape and use tangents to edit that shape. I believe i am getting a better understanding of it slowly, of how the curve shape works, but realistically it going to take years in for me to master this. 

My first test i did for learning the Graph Editor, was using a cube and animating it around, seeing how the animation curves react in maya when i animate. I used some animation principles such as slow-in slow-out, squash and stretch and looking at the timing most of all. 

The Graph Editor is really stressful to get to grips with for the first time. It took a while for me to understand a little about what the animation curves shape and the use of the tangents.

Video Footage: Lazy Joey Walk

Joey is describe as a lazy kind of guy, So i made a video footage as reference  of joey walking Lazy. I thought this was a good example of the walk that i might use.

Video Footage: Joey angry at the Mac

Here I broke down my video footage into key poses, analysing the timing and gestures of myself.  i found pretty much all the animation principles in this one small video footage that i made which was very useful indeed.

Video Footage: Joey angry

Scene 2 Shot 12: Joey is still not getting he's nuts, and is really angry abusing the machine Now.

Here I took a video footage of myself acting like Joey at the vending machine when he is angry, abusing the vending mac, stressed and angry (highly).

Here again the look into its line of action, its timing, body movements and facial expressions.

Here i did a small animatic of joey getting angry using my video footage.

Vending Mac: Animation Test.

Shot3: The interactive vending mac comes out from under the ground.(entrance)

Here i decided to do a test from my production (knockout nutz) of the vending mac coming out of the Ground. I wanted to make the entrance of the vending mac appealing to the audience. I was thinking about using about using exaggeration on the vending mac.

Screen shots

                             Test in Maya