Complete one hand-drawn and one Maya ball-bounce animation. Upload your two Quicktime h.264 .mov 1280×720 files to Blackboard by sometime Thursday, August 29. No project files needed, yet.

See here for details.  (For sake of time, the maquette portion may be omitted or completed for bonus). Complete and submit by Thursday, April 11. Be prepared to present your work in class.

Animate and upload the following scenes (.zip of project folder along with separate 1280×720 h.264 .mov file):

• dive (from text, ch 4)
• “flour sack sees the spider” from class (linked here earlier) or “coin pickup” (from text, ch 7)
• one stylized walk cycle (such as a run, sneak, happy or sad walk, etc.  – see text and also “Animator’s Survival Guide”)
• video reference clip from class exercise completed
• performance piece (most weight will be given to this):  1.  Choose a sentence or so of an audio clip from a film, game, etc. or record your own.  2.  Decide the “performance” for the scene — this may consist of one to three camera shots.  3.  Create your camera or camera shots and any minimal background scenery needed.  4.  Animate the primary and secondary animation of your character for the scene performance, then proceed to finish the facial expression animation and lip-sync to the audio clip.
• Be prepared to present/critique clips in class.

You may use any of the freely available rigs.  The masked-character would be good to test for some of these, as it will be used later in the production, but you may also use some of the rigs mentioned and linked earlier in class and on the blog. Here is a site that you may find useful for finding a fun audio clip. Be creative in whatever you choose and think of an interesting performance that relates to your audio, perhaps in an unexpected or witty way, to make your animation more fun and dynamic.

Using the flour-sack rig, or another rig of your choice, complete two of the exercises described in chapter 3 of the character animation:  lift and either push or pull. Use the principles of animation to make interesting and believable timing and spacing as well as dynamic animation. Due Thursday, February 28.

As part of a class exercise today, watch this documentary. Join the “320 Forum” group on this site, and in the Pencils-to-Pixels topic discuss the documentary, things that interested you, and the following:

• How do commercial attitudes affect all types of animation as an art form?
• Are there abilities that 3D animation has that 2D does not? Vice-versa?
• How has 2D animation informed 3D animation?
• How could 3D animation better benefit from techniques learned through the development of 2D animation?

Next, read these Wikipedia overview entries on animation:  The Golden Age of American Animation and History of Animation (also, particularly History of United States Animation). What names, films, devices, etc. do you recognize from our discussions and videos?  

Complete chapter 2 in your “Character Animation” text. Also, read through chapters 1 and 2 in “How to Cheat in Maya.” From chapter 2 in the character animation text, complete one hand-drawn animation of a ball of your choice. Complete two additionally in Maya of different types, although one can be the same type of ball as your hand-drawn if you’d like. Make sure to pay attention to using the principles of animation to communicate a feeling of weight, reaction, etc. as well as create a dynamic and interesting animation. Due Tuesday, February 12.

Complete the following:

1. Create a web portfolio space of some kind to post media developed for this course and that could be used afterwards to show your work. You may create your own site using HTML, CSS, etc. and host it on your student web space or use some third party setup that could include hosts such as Carbonmade, Tumblr, etc.
2. Post the videos from your homework up to this point. (2D and 3D animation exercises).
3. Complete and submit your story pack, consisting of the following:
•           — A .pdf file that includes the title, premise, treatment. (All programs on MacOS may print to PDF. On Windows, use Acrobat or a free program such as CutePDF).
•           — The same file (or another .pdf) should include the script with proper industry formatting.
•           — The same file (or another .pdf) should include the shot list with framing descriptions and also storyboard illustrations (with 16:9 or 1.85 aspect-ratio frames, one per page).
•           — The same file (or another .pdf) should also include at least one color-key per scene.
•           — A movie file (1280 x 720 H.264 Quicktime .mov) that contains the animatic with possibly rough sound and/or dialogue.
•           (All of the above should be in one .zip archive folder named YOURLASTNAME_320_P1_STORYTITLE.zip).

 

Due Thursday, Feb. 7 by class-time. Be prepared to present any aspects of your story.

 

Ideally, you should be able to read your logline/premise and then play your animatic and have it stand alone to tell your story!  (Or at least with a little narration from you, if absolutely needed).  

Then show your color key(s) to show your visual style/art direction/palette. That should be about it. (If you have to read your treatment or script or storyboard descriptions — you might not have done your job thoroughly).

Look over your previous animations, think about discussions in class and the text, and animate a similar animation as to the first exercise. Try to communicate more dynamic movement with character. 1. Animate a “drawn” (no circle shape tools) ball bounce (with horizontal and vertical motion, at least 4 bounces — probably 40 frames or so) in 2D. (See your book for more practice and info). 2. Animate the same in 3D using Maya. 3. Brainstorm and generate a list of settings, characters, and character motivations. Choose at least three sets of these that would relate. Submit a text file containing three log lines based on these. Upload two movie files and a text file. [No Maya files needed, yet]. (Due Tues., Jan. 29).