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.