Evaluation 3D animation

My experience with Maya has been a rollercoaster, with some parts going smoothly and other parts rocky and disorienting. However, this has probably been the most challenging but independent project so far, considering I had limited knowledge of the software. The outcome of the final animation was way better than I expected however there were parts I believe I definitely could have improved. The part of the animation that I am the proudest of is the walk cycle, I believe I added smooth motions as well as adding personality to the character. the emotion you could see from the walk is perhaps overconfident, upbeat, well paced. in terms of the pacing, I believe I did a relatively good job.

The feedback I got from the animation was mostly positive however, some noted that the animation was unfinished and ended abruptly. I completely agree with that and wish I had more time to complete the rest of it. However, the upside is that it fits the requirements of the brief. it was 20 plus seconds long which was the requirement to pass that section. I faced many complications such as being unable to open my file at home with my character appearing invisible but the stage was intact. I also had issues moving the character as a whole so instead, I ended up moving some of the limbs individually. The issue was also the lighting as I failed to add effective lighting onto the animation so in a bright room it was hard to see my animation. however, in a dark room or a smaller screen (not a projector), it looks a lot easier to see.

I created the character seen in the animation on the Autodesk character generator and was told to make the character look as accurate to myself as possible. we then had to to make sure the character was a compatible file type to use in Maya, we then imported it into Maya and then removed the preset rig and created a quick rig so we were able to move the character freely.

In future projects, I would initially have more time to research into ways of animation characters effectively, for a beginner as I was looking at a lot of the tutorials on youtube which initially put me off it. what I am proud of and have learned from this, is even if it feels impossible (which at a time It did) it is definitely possible and I’m happy I was able to create a passable animation. it’s not perfect but way better than I expected.

FMP Animation/ Evaluation

 

(Click here for my Animation)

To start off I’d like to state that I tried my absolute best with my animation, however, given the fact that my animation skills are very poor and I didn’t understand it completely, the animation kinda failed for me. The animation was originally going to be an informative and educational animation about the “brief facts” about Eadweard Muybridge.

However, during the process, my ideas changed as the character’s movements were relatively restricted as well as the movements would move strangely and gave a feeling of poor quality or something not to be taken seriously. so I decided to work on that and actually make it intentionally “bad” in the sense of the movements. however, I tried to make it somewhat interesting, with special effects (implemented by after effects), and music (implemented by garage band as well as logic pro).

The animation had to consist of 30s (30s maximum and 27 secs minimum). to create the environments I took images of Kingston as well as images that I have taken in the past and applied a posterised/ cut-out effect onto them. all the images I used were a primary source (taken by me) however a few of the sound effects like the birds chirping were from “soundbible”. to create the rain effect, however, I got rice and literally poured dry rice onto my phone whilst the recording was playing. meaning the phone was able to record the impact properly as well as being able to hear the impact the rice/ rain would have if it was actual rain.

I originally created my environments using illustrator and photoshop using the paintbrush tool as well as various tints and tones of colours. however, I realised that the environments ended up looking amateur and mediocre, so I decided that environments which are sourced from real life areas would look more effective.

I originally wanted to create this animation frame by frame but I later realised how tedious and time consuming that would’ve been as it took extremely long to create this animation using digital means. The character featured in this animation is a variation of Eadweard Muybridge. the reason why he has no eyes or mouth is merely the art style I chose to use. I thought an abstract approach to the animation would give it a more surreal feel.

the requirements were to make it 1080p HD, H.264.

the feedback i got was mixed but was very helpful.

it has shown me that people did appreciate my efforts as well as getting some great feedback from them all, i believe it would give me a better chance in future.

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