The Improved Patches Animation

Animated Pirate Research

I feel that the pirates in these animations have similar characters to the one that I have been trying to create for my animation test using Patches.
On the link below are some more clips of Those Scurvy Rascals on the website of the creators.

Those Scurvy Rascals Clips

Pirate Animation Yesterday and Now

A couple of days ago I went in to talk to the Pirate team about how my animation was and Lewis noticed that I had not dicovered all of the blendShape options for Patches (the Pirate model).
So here are some changes that I have made to my animation mostly using the blendShape but not all.

Old:



And after the changes I made today:



There are still improvements that need to be made. For example at the end, when Patches is swinging his arms, I feel that his right arm goes in terrible positions especially the lower half. I am going to work on this next, but overall I feel that there has been a lot of progress.

Project Brief

Stephen Pender

ANI09208
Industry Exercies 3 – Selling Yourself.

Project Brief

My assignment is to work with two third year groups and to animate a scene for each group.
I will receive a modelled and rigged character designed and built by each group. As the characters are not completely finished, I will texture them and then create lighting for the scene.
I will keep in touch regularly with the groups by emails and face-to-face meetings. All feedback from the groups is to be actioned and accommodated. I will also keep my own blog as as a record of my progress.
The deadline for this to be completed is Friday 4th June, but I am aiming to have this completed by Friday 28th May.
I am also going to create a showreel, which includes past and current work.

Things To Change

I do have plans to make certain changes to the animation, for example when the character lifts the weight I want to make him step back slightly; make him lift the weight faster and show more force as he lifts. There are also some changes I want to make closer to the end when he is hit by a stone - I would like to make his legs move and not his body. Also when he turns round to find who threw the stone, I would like him to look confused, not angry.

Video of The Weekend's Work

Beginning My Second Test Animation

Ok, I’ve had some feed-back from Sarah and as a result I am now reworking the gnome test animation. I am going to make sure I incorporate all the tips that she has given me.
I understand that they want to see better animation by me, as I do not think that the last test was up to my usual standard and I definitely feel that I can produce a lot better animation for my next test.
Yesterday and this morning I added keyframes, which contain all of my storyboard poses. I think that compared to my last test they are a lot better gestures and I added more exaggeration into them.
Then this afternoon I started to add some more detail in between and I adjusted the timing by putting the storyboard poses in the planned positions. I also paid attention to the feed back from Sarah from the last test. For example I added breaks into the animation so that the character is not always moving.

Animation Sent

I have now sent my test animation to Sarah and I feel fairly pleased with it.

As I have spent quite a lot of time using one of the gnome models, I feel that I would be better when I next use one of them. I really like the character and am looking forward to doing more work with him.

There are some other things that I would have liked to include in the animation. One of them would be more follow through.

In hindsight maybe it would have been better to have concentrated on a smaller number of movements and tried to perfect these.

Things I have improved this morning....

Last night and this morning the things that I have been working on are

1. In some parts of the sequence the gnome is moving too slowly - speed and sharpen him up
2. Needs more exaggeration and good poses (to make his feelings clearer)
3. In the walk, put weight in correct position so that he is clearly annoyed/stompy

To address this I

1. Went through the timeline and selected any parts of the animation that were going too slowly and condensed it

2. I added some more exaggerations into the animation e.g when the stone hits the gnome on his head, angrier when he is turning to see who threw it and more emphasis when he is lifting the weight.

3. I changed the steps of the walk so that it looked more like his foot was coming straight down to hit the ground.

Test Animation Playblast

Here is my test animation playblast.

Could you please give me your feedback.

Playblast

Here is a playblast of my animation so far. I feel that there are quite a few parts that I would like to improve but I do think that I am getting there.