- anticipation
- squash/stretch
- staging
Homework #2: Principles of Animation
Read Chapter 1 in HTCM 2014 about the principles of animation and complete the exercises for the following:
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Homework #1: Get Warmed-Up
Submit the following to your Dropbox submission folder:- Three log-lines that suggest setting, character, motivation, and conflict.
- Animation (of any means you desire at this point) of a ball bouncing several times.
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Welcome to a New Semester!
Welcome to a fun and challenging semester! During this course we’ll be following a production pipeline similar to that used in the industry at computer-animation and visual-effects studios. Software required is installed in the Digital Arts Lab, and you are encouraged to work there for a variety of reasons. You can also get most software, though, for use at home (and even for free). Primary tools that we will use will include Maya 2016, possibly Mudbox, RenderMan Non-Commercial, and Shotgun Production Management software. You can obtain Maya, Mudbox, and other tools here. RenderMan is available here. You will not need to download Shotgun, as we have our own web address associated with our licenses (da.shotgunstudio.com), but you can read more about the software here. -
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Friday, November 7: Two-Part Animation and Production-Pipeline Quiz
There will be no class meeting on Friday afternoon. Complete this two part quiz/exercise on Friday or over the weekend.- Login to Blackboard to take the short, question-based quiz. It is timed, but much more time than needed has been entered for the timer.
- After finishing that, download the productionPipelineQuiz.zip from the shared class Dropbox production folder. PLEASE DO NOT EXPAND IT THERE, but please move it elsewhere on your local machine to extract the .zip file.
- Inside the .zip file, there is a Readme.pdf that explains the exercise. It is a practicum related particularly to the rough-layout portion of the production pipeline.
- Follow the directions to complete the rough-layout portion of the exercise and upload in your normal Dropbox submission folder a productionPipelineQuiz folder that includes your work.
- For bonus, complete additional animation such as lip-sync and character movements and include full, rendered movies with sound.
- Do your best in both the rough-layout and in any bonus work that you do to achieve a highly polished production-level quality.
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Project #3: Character Development
See here for details. (For sake of time, the maquette portion may be omitted or completed for bonus). Complete and submit by class time Friday, November 17. -
Video Reference Practice (Homework #5)
Here are some files that we’ll use today to discuss video reference to help with animating tricky shots. -
Lip-Sync Links
We’ll be talking about some face-animation and lip-sync concepts today — audio files should be .wav or .aiff (and still may not load if encoded in a standard that Maya does not recognize).- Here are slides for today’s discussion.
- Here are some files we may use for example.
- Here’s one website that has a collection of movie quotes in .wav format.
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Fall 2014 Project #2: Character Animation Skills
Two well animated shots:- Walk cycle animated to indicate an emotion, mood, or performance (happy, sad, sneak, gallop, run, etcetera). See chapter 5 in Character Animation Fundamentals as well as The Animator’s Survival Kit for more information and examples. Work to convey your chosen mood here — avoid just keyframing and calling it something after the fact.
- Performance Piece with Lip-Sync: Choose a favorite line from a film or game or record your own dialogue. Have your character act a performance that somehow connects to the dialogue — be creative! Convey as much emotion through primary animation moving down to secondary, then key-frame lip-sync performance to the dialogue for the final touches along with facial animation to convey the full emotion of the acting.
- Walk cycle animated to indicate an emotion, mood, or performance (happy, sad, sneak, gallop, run, etcetera). See chapter 5 in Character Animation Fundamentals as well as The Animator’s Survival Kit for more information and examples. Work to convey your chosen mood here — avoid just keyframing and calling it something after the fact.
