Nelly Luckett : BA (Hons) Computer Animation Arts, UCA Rochester

Today was our first Maya class of third year. Where has the time gone! We are going to start off all classes by doing a Moom speed posing task. We are given 5 minutes to pose moom into a position of our choice. He is then assessed as either being fine, needing to go to A&E or being dead, depending on how much his joints are damaged. This is the position I decided to model Moom into. Needless to say I hadn't exactly made this easy for myself, but I did my best within the time constraints. This was the result of my first attempt. He looks ok from a distance, however there are some joint issues. He has broken wrists and a glitch in the skinning over his stomach where the position has become too extreme. So after Alan's feedback I decided to fix the pose, and try and repair all his injuries, and I am much happier with the final result. The main part of the class was based on using multiplication/division nodes to create a squash and stretch beha...

Animation Moom Poses:   https://eleanorl-caa.blogspot.com/2018/09/moom-animation-extremes.html Moom Weightlifting:   https://eleanorl-caa.blogspot.com/2018/11/moom-weightlifting-animation.html Chaplin Dope Sheet:   https://eleanorl-caa.blogspot.com/2018/11/dope-sheet-updated.html Chaplin Extreme Poses:   https://eleanorl-caa.blogspot.com/2018/11/charlie-chaplin-animation-extremes.html Chaplin finished playblast:    https://eleanorl-caa.blogspot.com/2018/12/finished-charlie-chaplin-animation.html Infographic tests:  https://eleanorl-caa.blogspot.com/2019/02/infographic-sequence-tests.html Doctor Who Infographic:   https://eleanorl-caa.blogspot.com/2019/02/info-graphic-submission-doctor-who.html Facial animation https://eleanorl-caa.blogspot.com/2019/03/moom-suprised-animation.html Lip synch lesson 1:    https://eleanorl-caa.blogspot.com/2019/04/lip-sync-210319.html Lip synch lesson 2:   https://eleanorl-caa.blogspot.co...

I decided to do a number of 2D animation tests using after effects to try out my ideas for animation styles. This is the first one of a moving 2D layered sea. This is something I am very happy with the aesthetic of.

This was our final Maya animation class of the year with Alan. I've found this very very useful and it has made me very excited for animating next year.

Following last week’s session, and a conversation with Alan, I decided to create some GIFs to help me to visualise how the sequences might work. All of these files have the separate moving parts on different layers so they can be taken as photoshop files directly into after effects.

This is the mime opening scene. I'm quite happy with his expressions. Here is the final version.

This is all the shots edited together to give the final scene of the mime's act.

Here is the mime's act with facial expressions. This is a render from distance but the final section will have multiple shots. This playblast was to see how the expressions work. The feet are doing odd things and I think some of it is down to the broken rig, but you shouldn't see it at all.

This is a rough playblast of the mime's act. It has no facial animation at the moment, and there are varying shots to be put in throughout, however this is the overall animation. There are a couple of bits that need fixing in the animation and I will do this tomorrow. The camera will also not be in this position. I have had a large number of issues with Maya glitches this evening, but I'm glad I've got there now.

This animation was a bit of a challenge as we were using very old footage of Charlie Chaplin. The way he moves is very interesting and unusual. It was a challenge that I quite enjoyed.

This is the opening for our collaboration film. Overall I am quite happy how this came out. Its not perfect, and this is something I'd like to revisit if I have time before the deadline. The ripping in half of the poster was a challenge, but I'm fairly happy with how it came out. I feel that I have captured the expressions well. A good introduction to our cheeky Mime.

The animation we are currently working on in class is using a Charlie Chaplin section as reference. So far we have only put the extremes in, however I feel that this is already starting to look as it should, just lacking easing and some of the finer movements.

Over the last few weeks we have been working on the animation of the Moom character weightlifting. We worked on this from reference footage. I currently only have playblasts of the animation. See below. We will partially render this in a few weeks.

So in our CG workshop, we were given a pre-made and pre-rigged character to use in order to practice our animation and positioning. We had to find 5 reference images to work from in order to practice proper anatomical positioning. The Fencer The Free runner The Dancer The Weight lifter The Runner

Animation was one of the sections of this first year that I found arguably the most difficult. I feel like I have improved a lot as the year went on, however it has really highlighted for me some areas that I need to work on over the summer. These include doing more drawing from life in a quick paced environment (eg. on public transport etc) to get my drawing of people and capturing of positions quicker and ultimately more sucsessful. I think this unit also taught me that I need to get better at organising myself when doing a planned out animation so that I do not have to go back and alter it as much as I had to in some of these shorts. However, I believe overall my animations communicate well when viewed by an audience and are ultimately sucsessful. I also discovered that I definitely find animating with cut outs and Maya much easier than hand drawn animation.