3D animation

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.