Assigned: Thursday, November 15th
Due Dates: 11/26, 11/29, 12/6 @ 3:00 PM each day
Sitting down is a complicated action. You will need to study your reference and figure out how the body shifts weight. You will also be required to incorporate emotion and acting into your character for this assignment. What your character does and they feel is completely up to you. However, the action should be clear and the emotion easily read. Start your character in a standing position and end in a sitting position with acting throughout; be creative!
Try not to spend too much time modeling extra props. Create rough models or just use primatives instead; the focus is on the motion and acting in your work.
And start early! See the bottom of this page to see what's expected of you for both motion check-ins and turn-in. These check points are particularly important for this assignment.
Summarize what you plan to animate by preparing a two sentence description of your sit's story. One sentence will need to describe the personality of the character you will be animating and the other sentence will describe the circumstances surrounding the sit. Include the video reference that inspired your story.
Draw a planning sheet of the key story telling poses then apply them in Maya using a copy of either the Evelyn or Phil rig. The important thing for this week is laying out your animation. Pose the key poses ("golden poses") in stepped mode from your planning sheet. Don't worry about the extremes, just make sure your story reads. Animation layout is meant to cover the broad strokes. It gives you a chance to catch any major problems before you advance too far in your motion. Think about shot framing, how far your character needs to travel across the screen when moving, how many steps need to be taken, if your golden poses read, and if there are even enough key poses to properly convey the story.
You will be animating from a single, fixed camera angle. The camera should be about 3/4 to the front and your character's full body should be in view throughout the entire animation. The resolution of your final output will need to be 1280x720, however you can work in 640x360 for now (as it's the same aspect ratio). All of your motion arcs and silhouettes will be relative to this camera. Don't be afraid to exaggerate your poses such that they only look good from this view. However, remember that you still need to pay attention to weight shifts on all sides, as those shifts will still affect how your character moves through space.
Fill in your extremes. Be sure you are also blocking in the facial expressions at this stage. Note that the face rig is separate from the body rig -- when you select all anims, you will be selecting either all of the body anims or all of the face anims. You can use the select all anims script sent over e-mail to bypass this. As you fill in these poses between the keys, you may find that timing and positioning may need to be adjusted. This is completely fine. You may find it helpful to periodically get feedback from your peers as you advance your motion.
For the final turn-in do a first pass of breakdowns.
Continue iterating on the breakdowns and then polish.
Note about motion check-ins: Because there is no class next week, you MUST have the specified materials ready for motion check-ins - it is important to your grade.