Week 1 - Elearning

Cow Modeling

This is a picture of the cow's head. I had problems modeling the cow head at first because the shape does not seem to be right. But after going through the tutorials from the video over again, I managed to understand how to do it. It took me about 3 to 4 times to redo the head. For the eye, I did not know how to extrude properly at first because it was extruded the other way round instead of extruding it towards the hole. As for the nose part, I did not know how to split the center of the hole therefore I left it. After modeling the head a few times, I somehow managed to do it. The same thing goes for the body. I had to redo a few time in order to get the right shape.

3DVA - Week 1 Character Development

Character Profile

The name of my character is Alexander. He is also known as Alexander the Coolest. Alexander is an arrogant, a show-it-all type of guy who wants to impress people by showing of his looks and talents. Despite his arrogant personality, he has a soft heart. He cares for the people around him.

Story Line

Magicians around the world have been practicing their magic skills at teenage age. Since young, they felt that magic was something impressive which could bring joy and fun to the audiences. Magic is not an easy task to perform. People need to have the interest of learning how to perform magic and also patience in order to succeed. Alexander is one of the many magicians who practiced hard everyday. He does not give up easily since he hopes to be the world's top magician. He performs hard on stage to amaze the audiences. Although he does make mistakes, the audience still applauded for him.

Driving Force (What motivates them?)

Alexander loves to see the people around him feel happy. He does not like people to feel bad about themselves therefore he practices magic tricks to show them that he could be the one to make them happy.

Traits that are unique to my character

Appearance:

- Alexander's key feature is his black and white outfit. He wants to impress people by looking good while doing magic. Most of the time his black and white outfit is the main thing that attracts people's attention because it makes him look cool and smart.

- Another feature is his long black hair, to show that he himself is cool looking magician by having this hair style. Everyday, he looks at the mirror to see if his hair is perfect.

- Another feature is his dark brown eyes. His eyes are quite scary looking but it does not scare people off easily.

Behaviour:

- Although Alexander appears to be arrogant, he treats people politely and even smiles at them.

- Whenever Alexander tries to do tricky magic tricks, he feels stress because he is afraid that the trick might not work properly when he is on stage.

Dialogue Sequence

Alexander: Abracadabra!

(The rabbit in the cage has disappeared.)

Where's the rabbit? Can you see where is it?

(Alexander asked the audience.)

Now, I need a volunteer to come up stage.

Audience: Me, me!! Pick me!!

Alexander: The little girl over there! Come up here!

(The little girl ran to the stage feeling excited.)

Now I'm going to cover the cage with a piece of cloth. When I count to 3, I want you to say "Abracadabra!". 1, 2, 3...

Little Girl: Abracadabra!

(Alexander slowly took off the cloth and, the rabbit appeared again. The little girl's reaction was shocked.)

LOOK! The rabbit's back in the cage!

Alexander: You did it! Well done my friend! Here's a little souvenir for you. You may now proceed back to your seat. (Little girl walked back to her seat.)

www.google.com

http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&q=shimeji

Lineage

My character Alexander is a magician while the character that I found on Google does not do magic. Alexander likes to wear a black and white outfit most of the time because it makes him look smart and cool. He gets stressed when his magic trick does not work. When he is really tired from practicing hard, he tends to sit on the floor and sleep. Alexander is not a guy who is violent. In comparison to the character from Google, the guy is not a magician. He likes to wear a red coat and brown pants because he wants to be simple but cool looking. Most of the time, he does not like to wear his coat because he thinks he is cool looking when he shows off his body. He gets very excited whenever he sees food. He tends to be a little bit violent if someone tries to make fun of him.

IN3D Final Project

Scenario 4
Storyline

A robot named T-Rex was picking up boxes continuously, one after another. After finish picking 2 boxes and placed them at the side, there is still one remaining box which did not move forward. T-Rex waited for the box to move but failed. Suddenly, a big red box appeared. It managed to push the box forward to allow T-Rex to continue picking up the box. T-Rex then felt relieved such that the remaining box was stuck onto him. He tried to shake the box off till it landed on the ground. He was lucky that there was a big red box that could help him move the remaining boxes forward, otherwise, he would have a hard time.

Sketches

Bends down and up while picking up and stacking the boxes.

 Stops when the remaining box did not move forward.

T-Rex felt relieved when a big red box appeared to push the remaining boxes forward.

Success of Final Model/Animation & Errors made

I faced many problems doing the animation of the arm constraints. My boxes could not be stacked before probably because of the constraints. I had to keep on redoing my constraints. Therefore I decided to place the boxes at the side of the mechanic arm instead of stacking them up. At first, I intend to do 4 small boxes for my animation, but I ended up doing 3 boxes only because of the problems that I faced with the constraining part. At the end of my animation, I made the mechanic arm robot, T-Rex, felt relieved by lifting up the final box and then place it at the side. The final box was supposed to be placed onto the ground like the rest but I made the box flew off the mechanic arm by changing the blend parent.

IN3D Week 13 Lab

1) Apart from their different sizes, it is obvious from Luxo Jr. that the big lamp is “older” and that the small lamp is “younger”.

How is this communicated by the animation? Give at least THREE examples.

We could tell that the big lamp is older and the small lamp is younger because of:

 a) Emotions

The big lamp was feeling depressed at first as I could see from the video that its head was bending down low. When the ball rolled towards the big lamp, it was trying to figure out who does the ball belongs to. It tried to return the ball but somehow the ball just kept on rolling towards it. When the big ball was rolling over, the big lamp was shocked. Instead, it just stood at one position, watching the small lamp running after the big ball. As for the small lamp, I could tell that it was feeling very excited and lively.

 b) Movement

The small lamp is obviously younger because it is moving around quickly or jumping around the room whereas the big lamp does not move actively when the ball is being passed to it.

 c) Timing

As humans age, our movements tend to be a little bit slower compared to teens and children. This is because  the older we get, our body cannot function as actively as the young ones. If we compare the big lamp and the small lamp, the big lamp is older since it is not quite active when it comes to wild games. Whereas the small lamp could still run quickly chasing after the ball.

2) Give an example from Luxo Jr of how timing is used for comic effect. Explain how the timing decisions contribute to the humour.

    An example of timing used for comical effect is, when the big ball rolled towards the big lamp. The big lamp felt sorry for the small lamp at first because the small ball was being flattened. But after the big ball appeared, the big lamp was shocked to see the small lamp chasing after the big ball.

   A character may be sad at first, thus the timing of movement is slow. Suddenly, when the character became happy, the timing for the reaction should be fast, making the character feel excited and happy. This timing decisions contribute to the humour when there is a sudden change in a character's emotions or behaviour.

3) When you create a joint chain, these form a hierarchy, with the first joint at the top and the last joint at the bottom. Explain why this is necessary for the joints to work properly.

    The joints must be able to work properly because the joints are like the movements and reactions of a character. If a character should be feeling depressed, their posture should be bend down low. It is necessary to create a joint chain so that we know which part of the body we should animate if we need the character to behave according to what we want the story to be.

IN3D Wk 12

1)  Do you need to be able to draw well to create good 2D animation? Explain your view.

   We do not need to be able to draw well to create a good 2D animation. 2D is quite simple to draw because it does not require much details of an object. It is just drawing the surface of an object.

2) Do you need to be able to draw well to create good 3D animation? Explain your view.

   We do not need to be able to draw well to create good 3D animation but we need to be able to visualize the dimension of depth, width and height of the object or character. When we know how to see the object from a perspective view, we can see the detailed parts such as how tall or short is the object, how thin or thick is the object, etc. From there, we can draw out the proportionate shape of it.

3) What do you think would separate a piece of poor animation from a piece of good animation? In other words, how would you go about deciding if a piece of animation is good or bad?

    I think one of the things that separates a poor animation from a good animation would be the lacking of principles of animation. An example for a poor animation would be like a character walking aimlessly without any expressions, and no different types of actions to impress the audience. An example of a good animation is a character exaggerating their actions at a specific time. For instance, the character receives a huge present from someone. When he/she sees the present, they expressions would be excited, eyes and mouth opened wide, etc. These little details will affect the audience as it tells them how to react.

4) In 2D animation, you need to be very aware of timing at a frame by frame level, using timing charts and other techniques - but for 3D animation, this is handled using the graph editor, which is more concerned with manipulating rates of change over time.

Does this affect how you approach your animation work? Explain.

It does not affect how I approach my animation work. Both 2D and 3D animation require us to take note of the timing. It does not matter which method is better to use. For 2D, we use techniques like key frames to take note of the timing for animation. For 3D, we use the graph editor to take note of the timing by adjusting the gradient or points of the graph.

5) Give a brief critique of Maya as an animation tool. Don't just say Maya makes animation difficult, or easy, or that you need to learn a lot of stuff to use Maya - explain what Maya does well and not so well in terms of creating animation.

    Overall, I find that Maya can do animation similarly to Flash. We can use Maya to create effects of an object, control the animation timing, 3D textures and shadings, etc. We can also use polygons to create a character and position them at the right place by using the 4 different panels.

IN3D Wk 11 Elearning

Squash and Stretch Animation

Why is squash and stretch so useful in animation?

It is useful in animation because this is to give the drawn objects a sense of weight and flexibility. It also creates a comical effect to the character.

Think of a situation in which extreme squash and stretch could be applied to a character - try to be original.

An example is a sponge. A sponge is being squashed when a person use force to squeeze it. It also can be stretched when the person tries to make it longer.

Think of an animation example where squash and stretch would NOT be appropriate.

Squash and stretch could not be applied to real life humans and animals. Our bodies are not flexible enough to add the effect. Unlike animation, we can use a software like flash and Maya to change the flexibility of the character.

If squash and stretch doesn't really happen so obviously in real life, why do you think is it so effective in animation?
 (Look at the title of Disney animator Ollie Johnston's famous book about animation - do an Amazon search ... there's a clue in the title!)

One of the famous book about animation by Ollie Johnston is The Illusion of Life. It was also written by Frank Thomas. Inside the book, they had included the 12 basic principles of animation. Squash and stretch is the most important principle. It gives the drawn objects a sense of weight and flexibility. This can be applied to objects or even human faces. A figure can have a comical effect if it is squashed or stretched to an exaggerated degree. The purpose of using squash and stretch is related to the laws of physics - based on observations of physical behaviour. Given from the book title "Illusion" means visual stimuli, which represents what is perceived in a way different from the way it is in reality. Therefore, when "squash and stretch" is applied in animation, the character turns out to be even funnier whereas in real life, we can't possibly squash and stretch a person because we are not objects.

IN3D Week 10 Lab 1

Principles of Animation


Staging

There are 2 people standing at a distance away. This is to tell the audience clearly that they are throwing the wallet to each other.

Anticipation

As we can see from the video, that the girl on the left is anticipating to throw the wallet to the opposite party. This is to show the preparation of an action that will be done.

The girl in the video above shows that she is getting ready to jump.

Exaggeration

The person is trying to run in a normal way, but at the same time she is trying to exaggerate by expressing her emotions while she is running. 

Timing

This is a slow motion run.  Speed affects the timing. It also means that the person can change his/her actions when they are doing a specific task.

Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose

This action is fast moving. The action is being planned out and it starts from the beginning to the end.

Ball Animation

What is ease-in-ease-out in reference to animation?

Ease-in-ease-out is also known as slow in and slow out. Animation looks more realistic if it has more frames near the beginning and the end of a movement, and fewer in the middle. This principle is being used for characters moving between 2 extreme poses, such as sitting down and standing up. It is also used for in-animation moving objects such as bouncing ball.

What does frames per second mean?

It means the number of image frames being shown within one second. This is used for the measurement of a video clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGT_5itAv0E&NR=1

This is an example of ease-in-ease-out.