Assignment #6: Sit Part 2

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: Sit Animation

Last week you worked on the key poses of your sit. These were the most important poses in conveying the emotion and story of your character. This week you will be using those poses to complete your animation, though with one small but important difference in how you animate: you will be animating from a single, fixed camera angle.

It can be a perspective of your choosing, but make it one where your character's actions read clearly. Specifically, the camera needs to be about 3/4 to the front and the full body should be in view throughout the entire animation. All of your motion arcs and silhouettes should be done 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.

What to do:

Part 2: Motion Finessing Review

For this week's motion review, try to have your animation as close to finished as possible. Since you will almost be done with a two week project, it will be about the time to really polish your motion, and the feedback you receive will be aimed towards helping you do that.

What to do:

1. Attend the normal motion review meeting. Have your motion as close to complete as possible. Meeting times are here.
2. Get feedback on your animation from at least two other students in the 490j class. As with the motion review meetings, try to have as much done as you can. Write down the feedback they give you, take a moment to type it up (it does not have to be in complete sentences, short notes are fine), and send it to the 490j staff by midnight Wednesday (2/18). This is so you can begin getting used to critiquing each other's work.

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: One playblast of your sit from the fixed perspective (about 3/4 to the front, full body in view the entire time)
• Part 1: One maya file of your sit.
• Part 2: Be there! Have something for us to give feedback on!
• Part 2: Get feedback from your peers and send it to the 490j staff by midnight Wednesday.