Assignment #5: Sit

1. Squash and stretch
   • Example: bouncing ball - without | with
2. Anticipation
   • Example: punch - without | with
3. Staging
4. Pose-to-pose action & straight-ahead action
   • Pose-to-pose action example: Lt. Dan jump
5. Follow-through action & overlapping action
   • Overlapping action example: three-linked pendulum - without | with
   • Follow-through/overlap example: Lt. Dan tail jump (see tail on landing)
6. Slow-in and slow-out
   • Example: pendulum stopping - without | with
7. Arcs
   • Example: simple head turn
8. Secondary action
9. Timing
   • Example: Lt. Dan jump - bad timing | good timing (or at the least better timing)
10. Exaggeration
11. Solid modeling and rigging, or Solid Drawing
12. Character personality, Appeal

Part 1: Video Reference

What to do:

Part 2: Sit Down

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 he does and how he feels is completely up to you. However, the action should be clear and the emotion should be easily read. Please 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; our focus is on the motion and acting in your work. Start early! Animating a piece that includes acting, should not be done within a span of two days. Spacing out your working time over the entire week will allow you to look at what you have with fresh eyes and spot problems that might otherwise be overlooked. To help us help you, we will be requiring two sentences from you due Sunday February 8th by 10:00pm. 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. Please ask questions if you have any before you send in your final sentences for our review. 

What to do:

1. Submit two sentences as described above. Please send an e-mail to Robert and Derek and cc Dave and Barbara with "Assignment 5 plan" in the subject line. This part is due on Sunday Feb. 8, at 10:00pm.
2. Take reference of yourself doing a sit down from a front and side view.
3. Draw sit planning sheets. Be creative with your poses. Use your reference to extract ideas, but try not to be too literal. Exaggerate to make your poses more interesting and readable.
4. Animate! Since this is a two week project your animation does not have to be complete next week, but all of your key poses need to be blocked out. However, as with the motion reviews, the more you have done the more useful feedback you will receive.

Part 3: Motion Review

As with the last couple of weeks we are requiring each person to attend an individual motion review meeting so we can provide feedback on your sit animation. You don't have to have everything 100% finished or perfect, but keep in mind that the further you are on your motion, the more useful information we can provide.

What to do:

1. All you need to do is attend the meeting. It will probably be held in the lab. Meeting times are here. Again, your motion doesn't have to be perfect - we are doing this to help you improve what you have at that point.
2. For this week's motion review video reference and planning sheets will be fine.

General Animation and Maya Tips:

• Your planning sheet should have everything you will need to know. You should, in theory, be able to animate without ever referring back to your reference - just to your planning sheet.
• Start with your key poses first! Get those right, then add breakdowns (keys further defining the motion between your keyframes) as you need them.
• When working on key poses you will want to key all of the controls on the same frame. If you stagger their keys, figuring out which key goes to which pose will become frustrating later, and in general slow down the workflow.
• Make sure keys don't land on partial frames (for example, frame 3.14). If this happens it is usually the result of key scaling. To fix partial framed keys, select all of the problem keys in the timeline, right-click hold on the selection, and choose "Snap".
• Try not to spend too much time in the Graph Editor. Focus on what your animation looks like, not what the curves look like. Don't be afraid to add more keys or breakdowns.
• Save iterations! You especially want to save an iteration when all of your key poses are set, before moving on to clean up the graph editor and adding inbetweens (basically another word for "breakdowns).

Playblasting:

Playblasts are Maya's way of creating a preview of your animation that runs in real time, and is much faster to create than a render. Go to Window > Playblast > OptionBox. Change the option for Viewer to 'Movieplayer', change the Display size to "Custom" and enter 640 and 480 for the two values. Change the scale to "1.00", and check "Save to File" and name it appropriately.

IMPORT NOTES: The point of playblasts are to get a good preview of your animation. This means that you should hide everything that clutters the screen, and set the camera up to get a good view of your motion (you don't want the camera so far away that your bouncing ball it just a dot!) You will want to hide the heads up display information by going to Display->Heads Up Display and unchecking everything in the list. You will also want to hide all of the animation controls. Since these controls are usually NURBs curves, go to the panel menu and uncheck Show->NURBS Curves.

Turn-in Checklist:

• Use .ma and not .mb
• Please name your files lastname_firstname_assignmentnumber_partnumber_filename.* (example: doe_john_a1_p2_character_ball.ma)
• Part 1: Reference videos of you sitting down (at least a front and side view).
• Part 2: Three playblasts: front, side, and 3/4's view.
• Part 2: Planning sheet(s)
• Part 2: One maya file of your sit.
• Part 3: Be there! Have something for us to give feedback on!