Research & Prototyping For November Competition
Research
For this animation project, I chose to do a series of different types of research for this project to get a rough idea of what exactly I would want for my animation and to bring out my thoughts. ​
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I chose the "AnimChallenge" competition because I wanted to have fun while developing more on the spinal movement in animation.
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I also made notes on what my foundation for this project should be:
Moodboard
While looking at the brief, I started by creating a moodboard on the type of gestures which could contain a little or large arch of the spine to add more movement to try and project what I wanted for the animation.​
Storyboard/ Series of Sketches
For the storyboard, I wanted to just show the different types of camera angles for the silly movement/ dance animation.​
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I may choose to keep it at one camera angle as this is mainly focused on the model movement
Like with the previous competition, I made the rough storyboard while listening to the audio while making notes as I was trying to project my thoughts onto paper in the moment.
Reference
I initially looked at different videos which were a combination of animations and live footage that conveyed similar types of conversations to broaden my research.
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Some of the examples are shown below:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAOR6ib95kQ
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdsB99HQ2S8
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7GWyLKZmso
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1wECKP8F7M
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVjIqr8CTtQ
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yllVeEE-zp0
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https://www.song-bar.com/song-blog/no-words-just-movement-dance-instrumentals-through-the-ages
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I started to do some research into some rigs too:
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https://callesantiago.gumroad.com/l/waitress
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I took a videos and combined them into one as reference to help with the animation process:
While I was using the reference as a guide to help me proceed with my animation, I used 'Syncsketch' to make notes and certain adjustments to project my thoughts more onto the actual reference which can also be useful for people to look at who may not understand my thought process since they are not in my head.
As I had to animate a 'back walkover', I had to look at different references such as videos and some gifs to help with the animation process with the help of 'Syncsketch', this was very needed as it was the bridge of one specific footage to another in my reference. As there were some plot holes in my reference footage such as legs being cut off in certain moments, I had to find some more footage to complete that to help further enhance my animation with feet placement. Here are some of the references I looked at while animating to help with feet placement and helped with the plot holes with my reference;
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMFQeG1XL/
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMFQeMw8c/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFY9htUiY0U
https://tenor.com/en-GB/view/walkover-back-walkover-gymnast-gymnastics-flexibility-gif-17858655
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Here are the links of the videos that were used in my reference video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZyUOA4y-Yw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE9ZF2eA-Fc&t=80s
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMFQemp6p/
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The link to the syncsketch page is here below:
https://syncsketch.com/sketch/NDA4ZTA2ZDc4/?offlineMode=1#/13856255/14472508/f_281
Prototyping
Stepping / Blocking
I first chose to animate the stepping with a 'Jill rig' to get base key points on the most important parts of the animation. This rig was most suitable for the job as it is highly unlikely for you to get distracted with other controls and it forces you to focus solely on the movement, not facial expressions or other unnecessary controls for the time being.
Spline
With the guidance of the stepping sequence of the animation, I used it as a guide as well as looking at the reference to help with certain movements I may have missed with the stepping animation. My main focus for the spline process was to be sure I was exaggerating the spine movement more than I usually would and correct the leg movement as much as I could to do less for the polishing phase of the animation.
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During the process of the spline animation, I had to adapt to many rigs multiple times as each rig I worked with during the project had a similar but different controls to one another. The initial rig I was working with before was the 'Nessa rig', this rig was very suitable when it came to the arm controls as the hands would stay stationary when animating the back walkover in my animation, the main disadvantage I had with the rig came the the rotation of the legs part of the animation which proceeds into an animation which is solely based on the lower half of the body.
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As shown above, with the 'dana rig' side by side with the 'jill rig' there is more emphasis on the spinal movement to exaggerate the animation even more.
During the spline process of the 'nessa rig' as well as the new 'dana rig' that I eventually switched to, I tried to exaggerate certain movement to give the rigs and animation a sense of energy, as I have learned from my mistakes in the past, even if your real life reference has exaggerated poses and is full of energy, if you try to replicate that in animation, your animation can look very rigid even though you had copied your reference frame by frame it will not give off the same energy as your reference.
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Link to Nessa rig: https://peerke.gumroad.com/l/NessaRig?layout=profile
Polishing Process
For the polishing process, I noticed how some parts of my animation still looked rigid even though I tried to exaggerate certain poses but I came to realise that even if I exaggerated one certain pose, the next frame that comes after needs to also be exaggerated or it will end up looking like a soft movement or still very rigid.
While polishing up the animation, I then proceeded to focus of controls that could bring the animation together such as the hand controls, the hair controls and facial controls.
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By choosing to move these specific controls it brings more life to the animation and does not look as soulless, rigid and show a lack of energy, I chose to work with these controls than not work with them at all because even the smallest of subtle changes/ additions to an animation can make a large difference to the whole animation as a whole, for the hair controls even though I may not have moved it as much or the animation does not show up as much I still chose to move it for my own satisfaction of having a subtle animation.
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As shown in the slide of screenshots above, I went into detail by specifically choosing to animate the fingers and facial expressions because as mentioned earlier, it adds more energy to the animation and makes it look more natural than lifeless and robotic in a sense.
Occurring Problems
Occurring Problems and How I Solved Them
I had a few occurring problems during the process of this animation project such as finding a specific rig I was comfortable with and a rig that I believed would match the animation routine I had put together, problems with the rigs itself and problems with the actual maya software when it came to the 'playback cache'.
Rotation With Controls
The first main problem I had was with the rotation of the controls with the 'nessa rig' while animating, after I got past animating the back walkover I started to have a problem when rotating the next moves for the animation which was mainly in the legs. No matter how many times I proceeded to redo the whole entire animation I ended up choosing another rig and restarting the animation process again.
Playback cache
The second problem I encountered which was occurring a lot is the 'Playback Cache' message I constantly received as I was doing my work, I tried looking at multiple sources to help me with this occurring problem. As shown below this was the message I constantly received as I was doing my work, the only way I was able to work around this was by changing my animation reference evaluation mode from 'Parallel' to 'DC'.
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Links to the websites I visited trying to research the solution:
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