When an object or character moves, anything "loosely" attached to it will follow a similar path of movement. The first exercise was simply a string attached at one end to an ever-bouncing ball animated to show the string following the movement of the ball.
Moving on to 3D with the same exercise meant achieving the same thing but with different tools. A simple chain of joints make up the tail. I was relatively happy with the result:
I then tried another exercise using an IK Spline to control the motion of the follow through. I think with some more time tweaking and more experience controlling the IK spline I could achieve what I was looking for:
Finally I ended the week with some fun 2D animating. I've realised that follow through motion is difficult to plan due to the fluid, natural type of movements so with this in mind I completed the following characters body animation from start to finish and then added his hair with straight-ahead drawings. The result is a little erratic and inconsistent but the actual movement is quite pleasing:
Week 2
Bouncing balls! Lots and lots of bouncing balls. I feel I've learnt an important lesson about using reference before diving straight in with an animation. We had a selection of different balls to throw around the studio while making observations. Interestingly though, I found creating animations that replicated the balls exactly as they behaved in real life didn't always achieve a pleasing or readable movement. It seems more important to observe the overall feel of the ball by dropping it on various surface and from a variety of heights. After some experimentation the fundamental differences between each ball become more apparent and it's these traits which must be represented, and to some extent exaggerated, in the animation.
Here I've tried to capture the "floaty" feel of a beach ball in simple 2D, however, I'm not so sure how effectively I captured it:
The following was an attempt at a Ping-pong ball, again in 2D.
The weekly crit was an interesting exercise, each animation was not named as the ball it depicted, instead we had to decide, as a group, which ball it was meant to be as a test of how convincing the animation was.
Moving on to 3D was an experience, having briefly dipped into Maya in the past definitley softened the blow but none the less I was feeling somewhat swamped by the complexity of the software.
Bowling Ball:
Football:
Ping-Pong Ball:
Here I've tried to capture the "floaty" feel of a beach ball in simple 2D, however, I'm not so sure how effectively I captured it:
The following was an attempt at a Ping-pong ball, again in 2D.
The weekly crit was an interesting exercise, each animation was not named as the ball it depicted, instead we had to decide, as a group, which ball it was meant to be as a test of how convincing the animation was.
Moving on to 3D was an experience, having briefly dipped into Maya in the past definitley softened the blow but none the less I was feeling somewhat swamped by the complexity of the software.
Bowling Ball:
Ping-Pong Ball:
My very first post on my very first blog.
And so begins my endevour into the world of Character Animation at Central Saint Martins LAS 18 (2010)!
Here is my first ever animation.
Week one involved being taught some of the fundamentals of how animation works and a few techniques for creating it. This, in my case, was followed closely by forgetting it all as soon as my hand aquired a pencil.
By the end of the first week, having pencil-hacked my way through a few trees-worth of animation paper and battled the intollerable flipbook software, I clutched a USB stick in my grubby hands containing the following:
This one is quite hard to see as I didn't set the contrast / white values very well.
Here is my first ever animation.
Week one involved being taught some of the fundamentals of how animation works and a few techniques for creating it. This, in my case, was followed closely by forgetting it all as soon as my hand aquired a pencil.
By the end of the first week, having pencil-hacked my way through a few trees-worth of animation paper and battled the intollerable flipbook software, I clutched a USB stick in my grubby hands containing the following:
This one is quite hard to see as I didn't set the contrast / white values very well.
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