From this, I decided to set myself another challenge (like the eyes and the cake). This time I wanted to show changes in emotion in as little time as possible. I thought back to Indiana Jones, the amount of emotion that Harrison Ford put into that scene, and how I could make links between two or three emotions, one after the other. I decided to go with:
tiredness > relief > happiness
The story I wanted to go with for this piece of animation is where this robot has been climbing endless stairs for what feels like an eternity. His goal, and the thing that's keeping him going, is the eventual reach and claim of the trophy.
I'm not 100% sure on how to present this story, so I've started with a side view of the robot walking up the stairs.
Walking up stairs (Work In Progress)
I'm having a little trouble with the rig, particularly the legs' IK (they snaps into different positions some times) and the eye lids (the mesh intersects the mesh of the eyes). These are little problems which I'm trying to get around but hopefully they won't be too visible on screen.
Change of emotion (from tiredness > relief > happiness - also a Work In Progress)
For the trophy model, I decided to duplicate the robot rig, pose him like a statue and change the texture to resemble that of gold. I also decided to add a fire dynamic to the model to make it more God like and to exaggerate the importance and passion for the robot wanting the statue.
Render of the statue prop on fire
Final animation
Maya screenshot showing the scene
I feel this piece of animation could have gone better but I do feel it gets across the character, his emotions and the story. When it comes to editing the reel later, I may leave this piece of animation out if it doesn't fit well with the other animations.