3D animation
At the start
of are 3D animation, the tutor said we were to use the skills we learned last
year and expand on them. For this task we had to get into groups of 3 to create
a show reel. Our lecturer showed us a show reel as an example. The reason we
have been assigned this assignment is so we can learn to understand the
technologies and technical consideration for game animation production.
In this
assignment we are expected to create a group video, containing in depth
research about our chosen movements. We are also
to show primary research by filming ourselves doing actions, rather than use
another video on the net, so they will be fresh, additionally
we will also be doing secondary research. Another part of this task is creating
photographic reference to help the animation, we will also create thumbnail
sketches in order to plan our animation. We will
conduct the class task by keeping a blog that
will document new tool and software exploration. The most important part is will be showing the principals of animation,
by creating a final cinematic animation with
each person
in the group creating four animations
each.
Our first task is to research, decide on
the topic and then sketch out and collected images of idle poses:
The
animation will contain an idle animation. An idle animation is important
because it is what the character goes into when
left for a certain amount of time, which could be something simple like slight
movement. Idle animations have to be short so they won’t look weird when the player
moves the character. An idle needs to blend into an action; an example would be
kicking which would work like idle-kick-idle. An extended idle when the player
goes away is important because it adds a realistic element to the game like the
character yawning. The idle always needs to be the
bridge into different actions.
Here is an
example of an idle pose:
In the group
I am in, we have decided to base our animation
on the matrix, because it contains a lot of movement and slow motion sequences.
The image of Neo on the matrix poster is a
good choice, minus the gun, because it shows the character in a tense stance
like he’s getting prepared for something, which is good because we will using a
lot of action in our animation.
This is Bruce Lee’s fighting stance. I think it would be good because it
flows into the way he fights which is in my opinion very similar to the
“Matrix” fight scenes.
In are group
we were discussing more about our animation, because my group has decided to do
the matrix, we pick 3 different parts of the film to animate. The clips we
chose were the beginning fight scene with “Trinity” fighting the police; the
second was the fight scene between “Neo” and “Mobius”. The final part was the
famous bullet dodge. Each of us had to select one clip and so I picked the
“Trinity” part. To start off with, I created a story board.
The story board
above shows the important parts of the animation and the key frames. Another
important element we have to do this week is create our idle poses.
My idle pose
shows the character holding their hands above their head, this is because they
have a gun pointed to their head. Another pose I am going to create is a
character pointing a gun; this is to make it clear they are being threated,
rather than it appearing that the character is holding their hand above their
head for no reason. As a group decision
we have decided to set ourselves an extra task of creating the four main poses
in our separate animation, so we all have an idea of what we are creating.
