Some fun inspiration

Referring back when I posted about the walk animation and the connection to the music video

I researched the french artist Jeff Le Bars out of curiosity and found his showreel which parts of actually reminded me of a previous groups work: Cope

But I also loved the style and the colours that were used in several of his animations.

There was also the fun video on how ZBrush is used to create character models, seen in the link below. It’s made me want to try and dabble in mudbox or even ZBrush itself to try and create full body models for myself.

ZBrush Video Link

I also found an artist on the website Tumblr who had a few amazing animated pieces that was great for a four legged walk cycle, and is great both artistically and for movement.

http://katieomeara.tumblr.com/post/129374825989

https://secure.assets.tumblr.com/post.js

Katieomeara

Evaluation of the Assignment

Starting out on this project I was really excited to expand my knowledge in maya, animating and practicing art.

For the modeling I joined up with Clare Millar, Courtney Sproule and Sionhan Robinson and we started working on our medieval village. For this aspect of the project I was a bit worried in case my models weren’t up to the rest of the groups standards, but I was surprised at how they game out, and how I managed to finally figure out ambient occlusion.

I wasn’t happy with the amount of buildings or work I got done, but I learned a few things that I can’t wait to try out and use to build my own things.

As for UV wrapping I got around to learning the basic’s, but will still need to practice it more to get a better idea for it.

 

For the animation section of the assignment I enjoyed it too, I still need to work on movement and weight a lot more, but I was enjoying making walk cycles and making the models come to life. Again, same with the models more practice is needed, but i’m a bit more confident in that I can actually improve.

 

For the concept art assignment, I paired up with Natasha Crowley, and unlike the other two areas I feel disappointed with how the concept art turned out. I have the ideas which I do intend to carry on, but I didn’t get to improve with colours and such due to circumstances, but really intend to push myself this term to improve as much as I can. That being said, the few pieces I did create aren’t the worst thing i’ve drawn, so I can a bit of improvement from the last time I have drawn.

 

To conclude I feel disappointed in myself for not doing as much as I wanted to for an assignment that I was extremely excited to start but I really hope I get another chance during the term to show what i’m capable of.

 

Dino Rider

As well as creating a human walk cycle I couldn’t help creating one for the dino rig, and gradually added more to create a walk cycle, adding in a human rig and accessories to create an turntable for an idea for the concept art world.

I had found a useful blog that helped with creating a decent dino walk as well as watching the cycles found for the run cycle which had helped with making the rig walk.

Their finalized walk cycle and the blog link.

I had also intended to rotoscope/ animate this in 2D but had very little time to do so, but sometime after the deadline it is something that I definitely want to keep working on.

 

Some weight

A video I am including as research for weight is for the game ‘Dragon Age: Inquisition’ showreel. From the giant jumping to the dragon hopping it is a great example of weight and how its used to show the size of the creature. 1.15 in the video too has a great technique to show how heavy the rig/animation can be.

 

I would like to experiment more with weight and to best use it, but I made a few attempts at conveying it.

Trying a simple hop and landing, its not very smooth or advanced and in the future would like to trying bigger jumps and more extreme weight in animation.

Also playing about with body mechanic’s, a simple turning around and acknowledging that might actually be kept as a longer animation after stress has died down.

Running

With practice, a walk cycle is manageable and it was something that I enjoyed learning. But a run cycle brought on a bit of a harder challenge, Following the Animators survival Kit I used the template on it to experiment and  try to get a feel of the run. I also decided to use a Dino rig found online to use for running, as I love the controls of it and had fun playing around with it.

The cycle above is the basic one for starting, and I started on fleshing out my run cycle. With a few mistakes of course.

I found an amazing dinosaur animator however, and using their work as reference I tried again and again to make the run better.

Macollo

has a lot of fun dino animations that is fun to watch and gives you a feeling of the weight in it.

With all this in mind I retried the rig again to make a moving dino.

Researcing the walk cycle

First thing to look at was the animators survival kit, and start fleshing out the walk i’d like for my rig.

I also started researching simple walks and animations that I came across in video games that inspired me.

The movements in Coopers animations are fluid and easy to follow, and aside from the research on walking/movement Coopers work and demo reels are amazing to look at for inspiration.

Johnathon Coopers portfolio

A music video that had my attention straight away was Caravan Palaces newest song ‘Lone Digger’, an animated music video with several interesting walk cycles, the one catching my eye more being the zebra waitress, whom i’m basing my rigs walk cycle on as inspiration.

Walk cycle tutorial

This tutorial by Francis Jasmin was useful as well which helped to remind me to keep an eye on balance and weight of the body.

Anatomy of a walk

A short and simple tutorial on walk cycles and how the weight, joint and most importantly the center of balance is to be used in a simple walk.

However looking at tutorials is helpful, but overall its practice that makes perfect, so there was plenty of experimenting/ practicing.

But eventually an acceptable(ish) walk cycle was produced, and although it doesn’t have the same movement as the inspired reference (Lone Digger- Zebra waitress) I think it still has a good movement to it.