Moving Morpheus: Posing in Maya

We were shown a little dude named Morpheus who can be 'morphed' into various characters, for now though, we had to learn how to move his limbs about and such. Heres four poses:

Crouch - I like crouching like this, for no particular reason really.

Scared/Please don't hit me - ....speaks for itself.

 Depressed slump/ more homework - his arms don't look as relaxed as I wanted to, will have to work on that in the future....

 

Sleepy yawn/stretching - Quite proud of this one, I get the feeling I should have exaggerated the leg poses though, maybe even pull him up onto the balls of his feet.

Overall, feeling pretty pleased with myself.

Make Burt walk

Maya practise again, this time with a character called Burt. Once everyone was done practising how to walk (paying attention to how they did it that is), we learned how to make Burt move, both as a character in an animation (film, tv show etc) and as a character in a game, where they essentially 'walk' in place.
I had fun experimenting with different 'walks', but eventually settled on a relatively 'normal' walk, where the leg swings out to the side slightly as it moves in front of the other.

Make it jump.

Its not Halloween yet, but we've been asked to make a square man jump, then react to something off screen. Not jump as in show him a horror film that could traumatise the little guy for life, more, jump as in hop to the side.

Managed to talk a flatmate into jumping about for a bit, only she kept jumping sideways. Seeing how I was pushing my luck in the first place I didn't try correcting her.

For the reaction, I decided to keep the 'plot' simple:

Square-dude is jumping at the same time as his friend (who is conveniently off screen) who then falls flat on his face, giving square-dude the giggles.

I used a HB pencil on this one (progress!) so you can actually -see- the animation this time. Pretty proud of the movements though for the laughing I feel he should move a bit slower at the end when hes 'calming down'. I remembered what we were taught about stretch and squash so I exaggerated the shape of the guy as he jumps (and prepares to jump) using my flatmates jump as a guideline.

See Squishy Roll....and bounce...bounce mostly...

Learning Maya is pretty difficult, if only because of the sheer amount there is to it (so many buttons!!!!) BUT I'm getting the hang of it, slowly but surely!

So, I decided to try and show off (just a bit) and made three obstacles for Squishy to navigate, a hoop, some stairs, and a tunnel/tube thing. I noticed when I was done that Squishy seems to be moving at the speed of light (maybe he was promised doughnuts at the end?) so I think my next area for development is my timing. Still pretty proud though!

2D Bouncing Balls

Another bouncing ball assignment, only this time in 2D using the line tester. My main concern was trying to get the timing right. I skyped home and asked my sister if she could time a tennis ball (I didn't know anyone with a football) dropping onto grass (3/4's or so of a second), then I dropped a large marble onto grass on campus and tried to time it. The 'bowling ball' dropped within about half a second and pretty much just rolled rather than bouncing.

I used the blue pencil and it seemed pretty good when I scanned it into the line tester, however looking back at this video the shapes are difficult to see even in fullscreen, so next time I'll stick to using blue pencil for the initial drawing, but then I'll go over the final drawing with a HB pencil. If that doesn't turn out any better for the next animation, I'll then try using biro.

3D Bouncing balls: First attempt

Using Maya I tried to make two balls bounce, one 'light', one 'heavy'. It isn't as easy as it sounds, we used a stretch and squash technique to make the animation more 'believable', I wouldn't say realistic as in real life a bowling ball doesn't change shape drastically when dropped, but in animation, it's not uncommon to exaggerate features or movements.

Update for 'Toy Storyboard and 'Small Eel', aka, learning to use flash again...

Here's the other drawings for the toy storyboard, the final image is of Gizmo crawling in through the window. I've been meaning to upload them earlier but I've been trying to come to terms with Maya (3D animation software) as well as trying to remember the basics about using Adobe Flash (its been a long...long...time).

Hanging from a tree.

Lost in the undergrowth

Getting his bearings

Didn't make it as far as he thought...

Getting home via drainpipe...

Back home (at last).

And finally, heres 'Small Eel', inspired from a trip to the small aquarium in Falmouth.

Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvJoVI3Hqjk&feature=g-upl

'Morphing'...literally a second long...

This is my segment from what will soon be a group animation, we each had to draw 12 images that would make 1 second of video, but we also had to 'morph' the final image from the previous student into something else. I had to 'morph' a duck, into an octopus, which I set up so that the next student could make a 'boom box'.

YouTube link for 'Morphing': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT6wDx4SAAs&feature=g-upl