2D Robot Animation - Animation

Importing the robot into After Effects from Photoshop was really easy and because I set up both the Photoshop document and After Effects composition as the same pixel ration (1280 x 720), I didn't lose any image quality.

Photoshop screenshot showing how I organised the body parts on separate layers

After importing to After Effects, I organised the layers and edited the pivot points for each of the body parts. I did this by going to the Pan Behind tool > select the body part > moving the pivot point to where I wanted it to be and then saved the changes by clicking in the Selection tool. After all these were set to how I wanted them, I set the robot in his starting pose.

Now I could start animating the robot. The animation style I adopted for this particular piece was inspired by that seen in the Rayman Origins game ...

12 Principles of Animation Explained with Rayman Origins

After Effects screenshot showing the body parts on their layers with some keys 

I'm happy with how this is turning out and am looking forward to compositing this with the U.F.O animation I have done. I am hoping to finish the robot animation by next week.

2D Robot Animation - Design

I've been thinking about the design of the robot and have decided to use the construction industry as inspiration. I decided to make a moodboard of images related to the vehicles and equipment used in the industry to get me started ...

Construction Vehicles and Equipment Moodboard

After looking through a plethora of images related to the construction industry, I started to sketch some  possible body parts for the robot ...

Robot body part sketches

Next I began thinking about how I will animate the robot and pondered about making the character design similar to that of the redesigned Rayman character from the fairly recent Rayman Origins game. Rayman's body parts are completely separate from each other which allows the animators to create a snappy animation style. Thinking about my own character, when it comes to importing the robot into After Effects, it will be easy to draw the body parts on separate layers in Photoshop and import the document straight into After Effects and finally animate each body part that way.

Robot Concept

Robot clean up in Photoshop

                                     

Robot 'Colour Map'

Robot Colour

Robot Colour (+Dodge and Burn)

Next I have to import these body parts into After Effects and begin animating them.

Venturing Into 2D Animation ...

I'm starting to feel a little trapped in the world of CG so I've decided to go back to trying some 2D animation. I want to advertise myself as an animator, not just a 3D animator. I'm not particularly confident in animating with Adobe Flash or Flipbook to create 2D animation so I've decided to go with Adobe After Effects.

My plan is to design the robot, draw it neatly in Photoshop (as well as colour), export each body part into After Effects and then use the transformation pivots to animate him. I will avoid as much tweening as possible and will use a lot of easing in and out for this animation.

I'm thinking of having a pile of robot body parts on the ground forming a robot and then performing something simple like waving to the audience or doing a hand stand. I really enjoyed compositing 3D and 2D animation together earlier in the term (with the eyes and tongue animations I finished a few weeks ago) so I am considering compositing the U.F.O model I made for the T - Rex animation in with this piece of animation although I am not sure how it would fit in there ...

I'm not too bothered if I don’t complete this piece in time for the deadline because it’s something I can always go back to and improve in the future.

Demo Reel - A Quick Edit

I wanted to see how my demo reel was looking so far so I decided to throw together a quick edit. I'm proud of what I've accomplished so far but I know I can do a lot better. 

T - Rex vs. The U.F.O Animation

Blocked animation (Work in Progress)

I've decided to leave the animation for a moment and start designing and modelling the U.F.O prop that the T-Rex is going to grab in mid air. The model will be simple and the design effective.

U.F.O design concepts

Finished U.F.O model in wireframe mode

Finished model textured

I already know what I want the U.F.O to perform in this scene but I will be watching reference videos for a little inspiration on how it might move throughout both this scene and the 2D robot animation later on ...

Tim Burton's 1996 "Mars Attacks" Title Sequence

Tim Burton's 1996 "Mars Attacks!" U.F.O Destruction Scene

Maya screenshot showing the scene set up

I also found some good reference videos for improving my dinosaur animation ...

Steven Spielberg's 1993 "Jurassic Park" T - Rex reference video

Steven Spielberg's 1997 "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" T - Rex reference video

Brad Silberling's 2009 "Land of the Lost" T - Rex reference video

Robot Lip Sync Animation

I really wanted to include a lip sync piece in my demo reel because not only is lip syncing a very important skill for an animator to have, but it's really enjoyable. I prefer to animate the lips first, then the eyes (and other facial features if necessary, depending on the rig / character) and finally the body.

Lip sync without body movements

Lip sync with blocked out animation (Work in Progress)

I'm enjoying this piece of animation because I can experiment with different poses for the robot during his performance.

Maya screenshot showing the scene set up

Hungry Eyes - Compositing in After Effects

Today I composited the 2D animation (the frames from Photoshop) on top of the 3D animation (a batch render from Maya) in After Effects.

Eyes animation

Tongue animation 

Final composite

I feel this animation has gone well and I'm pleased with the final product. I took a gamble with combining 2D and 3D animation but I think that it's worked well. I may develop this technique of combining forms of animation for my third year film but that is a task for the summer period.

Motion Capture - Trying Something New

After the motion capture talk a few weeks back, Ben and I decided to team up and figure out how we can use motion capture for our work in the future. 

I have been playing around with Motion Builder over the past couple of weeks and have gotten used to the software. We originally set out to use motion capture data to create a piece of animation using characters of our own or from the Internet although we didn't realise how hard it would actually be.

The furthest we got with it was combining a C3D file from the Internet with the standard human character model that comes with MotionBuilder. The Quicktime at the bottom shows our result from this experimentation.

Sean showed us a couple tutorial videos to help us with our task. The links are below ...

MotionBuilder Part 1 - Using Actors & Motion Capture Data

MotionBuilder Part 2 - Using Actors To Dive A Character

These videos were very helpful in our task. Thanks very much to Sean for showing us these videos.

MotionBuilder screenshots

The C3D file we downloaded from the Internet

Combining the C3D file with the standard human character in MotionBuilder

The character has been fully bonded with the motion capture data

QuickTime movie 

We got the C3D file from here:

Beyond Motion Website - Free Motion Capture Data

"Once Upon A Time In Leningrad" Animation Update 2

I've been working on the animation for Ed's film as well as the animation for my demo reel over the weekend and managed to finish three shots. I've shown them to Ed and he likes what I've done with them so far. I may have to go back and polish them even more to get them just right but for the time being I feel I've done well.

Shot 17

Shot 19

Shot 20

Maya screenshot showing scene set up for Shot 20

The animation for Ed is going pretty well, although I'm finding it a challenge to keep up with both the work for Ed and my own. I'm sticking to the daily deadline's I have set myself though so it's going well so far.

Hungry Eyes Animation - The Tongue

Going back to the hungry eyes animation I started last week, I realised that the animation wasn't clear enough, so I decided to go back to the drawing board and think of how to make this piece of animation clearer for the audience.

I decided to animate a tongue because I knew it's the best way to get across what I want the audience to know the character is feeling - hunger. I also animated a few saliva droplets to exaggerate the characters' hunger.

I also decided to animate the tongue in 2D and composite it with the eyes in post production because I want to try something new and feel the cartoon 2D tongue with the cartoon 3D eyes will compliment each other well.

Rough animation in Photoshop (repeated)

Final animation coloured in Photoshop (repeated)

I think this has worked well but I won't be able to tell if the whole thing works until I composite the eyes and the tongue together in After Effects later on.

Fox Ball Bounce Animation

This piece of animation took me longer to finish than I thought it would. Most of the time spent was on polishing the tail movements, particularly when the character rolls right and left. 

To help me get an idea of how follow through works in animation, I analysed a couple scenes from Disney's "Flubber". I found the following scene particularly helpful ...

Walt Disney's 1997 "Flubber" - "MAMBO!" scene

I also took note how the scene were set up and decided to use similar lighting for my scene. 

Maya screenshot showing rig and spotlight set up

After finalising the animation, I went back into the camera set up and began playing around with how it might react to the character bouncing on the ground. I tried the following approach ...

but in the end I decided that it just doesn't work since the weight of the character bouncing onto at the beginning and off the ground at the end isn't large enough to affect the camera that much. Following this, I decided to leave the camera how I originally set it up.