For the character animation assignment, you will be creating a story/action that is brief, clearly delivered and involves dialog. You will need to provide the audio, the context for the "story" and the action/acting.
What we're looking for on:
Tue, Jan 31 Bring in 3 different audio clips of dialogue that you would like to animate. The staff will help you narrow it down to one audio clip that you will be working with for the next two weeks. You will need to provide the context for the audio including the "story" and the action/acting.
The audio clip should be approximately 10-12 seconds.
Get the audio from Movies, TV yourself with a mic or any other source but make sure that it is CLEAR and everyone can hear it and understand it.
Try to find something unique, something that isn't immediately recognizable (for the same reason that we avoid anime and "Disney"...everyone already knows it's good and can tell when it's bad)
The clip should have only one person speaking (singing, whatever) just to make it easier for you to finish. You can have Packageman talking to someone off screen.
Explain why your take on whatever dialog you select is unique and different.
Don't forget to find audio with a clear emotional context and we'd like to see the character's mood change with the resulting change of emotion...
Thu, Feb 2
Reference video of yourself acting along with the dialogue. Try as many takes as you can to find the most interesting way of delivering the lines.
Planning - thumbnail sketches exploring poses and planning sheet.
Blocking (First Pass) - Pose out the "Golden Poses" and find your timing in stepped mode. These golden poses are the poses that are necessary to telling your story (it is possible that you may have as little as 3 or 4). Remember to make these poses strong and apply what you have learned.
Tue, Feb 7
Blocking (Second Pass) - Add additional poses, breakdowns, and anticipations to your blocking. This should probably still be in stepped mode, you can go to linear or spline if you feel more comfortable. All the actions should be clear and readable at this point.
Thu, Feb 9
Refining Pass - You should take you blocking and convert everything to linear or splines. Start working on smooth arcs and appropriate spacing. Also take your first pass at facial animation.
Tue, Feb 14
Polished animation - Finish up arc tracking, inbetweening, facial animation and take a look at this pdf: http://splinedoctors.com/stuff/polish1.pdf to make sure everything has been polished.
To add a wave file to Maya, simply select the file from your desktop and drag onto the time slider. You can import in multiple sound files, but only one sound file can be displayed and played at a time. Because of this, if you have several sounds to import in, you need to change the offset times of when these different sound files begin. In order to view the animation with all the sounds, the only option is to do it in post-production (Adobe Premiere can do it easily).
You can right click the Time Slider for more sound options. You can set the length of the animation automatically by right clicking the time slider and selecting Set Range To... > Sound Length and the time slider will be adjusted automatically. Remember to set your time units to 30 fps (animation options) before you start your animation. You must also set your options to play the time slider.
To delete an audio file, you have to options. Either select Edit > Delete > filename or use Edit > Delete All By Type > Sounds.
It may be easier to find the beginning of a sound by having the sound repeat until you drag the Current Time Indicator to the next time in the Time Slider. To enable this feature, open the Animation Preferences window and turn on the Repeat Sound option. In order to play the sound with the animation, you must set it in your timeline preference. (Settings and Preferences > Timeline). Under "Playback", change the Playback Speed to "Normal [30 fps]".
