Jack Cohalan - KNB135 Animation Aesthetics

This week's topic is expanding on last week's by having us animate a walk style with personality that is based on a character from a film, tv show or video game.  My Animation: My animation is going to be based off Spider-Man from the 2018 video game of the same name. The video above gives a reference to his walk cycle. A major part of Spider-Man's walk cycle that makes it unique is his posture and speed. The posture Spider-Man has throughout his walk cycle is very straight, giving off a confident and authoritative look. Spider-Man's walk cycle is also slower than a typical walk cycle, this also adds to the authoritative nature of his walk.  To start, I used the video of Spider-Man's walk cycle as a reference to block the key poses of the character's walk cycle. I then set the tangents to auto to show movement between key poses.  To finalise the animation I adjusted the keyframes to smooth out the movement of each bod

This week's topic was to animate a vanilla walk cycle using two different rigs, a legs only rig and then a full body rig. Walk cycles are a staple in animation and is a fundamental of character animation. Walk cycles are used everywhere, from video games to feature films. While animating my walk cycles I used the images below to help guide my posing and timing.  Task 1:  To start, I used the reference images to map out key poses the legs would follow. After creating a blocking pass I set the tangents to auto to see the movement in-between each key pose. To polish the animation off I adjusted the keyframes to give the legs a bit more bounce when walking. This adds a bit more life into the movement and makes the animation more realistic. Task 2: Once again, I started by blocking out the key poses of the walk cycle. I then set the tangents to auto To finalise the animation I made the characters movement a bit

This week's topic tasked us with creating two animations that both demonstrated a character shifting their weight. We had to animate a character shifting their weight from one foot to the other and then back again using a legs only rig and then a full body rig.  Task 1: To start the animation I created key poses the legs would be in at major points throughout the animation. I then set all the tangents to auto to give movement between each key pose.  After setting the tangents to auto the character never stopped moving, especially in the middle of the animation where it slowly moves to the next key pose. This is not realistic as a normal person would shift their weight, rest, and then shift it back. To fix this I made the rig stop moving after the first weight shift, after holding that position it then moved on to the next key pose.  The next step was to adjust the timing of the character's movement to make it a bit slower. Another

In this week's topic we were tasked with creating two animations from three options provided. The options were to animate a character pushing a heavy object, lifting a heavy object and pulling an object. For my animations I chose to undertake a character pushing a heavy object and a character lifting a heavy object. These animations have us utilise and put in to practice multiple animation principles previous ly learnt, such as  timing & spacing, slow in & slow out, arcs, follow through and overlapping action and moving holds. Task 1: To start my animation of a character pushing a heavy object, I blocked out key poses throughout the movement. I then went on to set all the tangents to auto to give the character movement in between each key pose.  To finalise the animation I corrected some issues caused by the automatic tangents. I made sure that neither the character's hands or feet went through the box or the ground as this would caus

Topic 8 is a continuation of topic 7 in which we are to use the character jumping blocking pass and polish it to create a finalised animation.  This week's lecture focused on many principles of animation, such as timing, arcs and anticipation, but the major focus was on exaggeration. Exaggeration, as many define it, is the pursuit of making motion exciting. Many animators claim that striving for a perfect recreation of reality can look static and dull, this is why exaggeration is such a prolific principle. Exaggeration effectively amplifies the motion, movement or posing of a character to give them more life and the amount of exaggeration depends on the kind of style an animator is seeking. Subtle exaggeration will create a realistic look whereas a lot of exaggeration will produce a more cartoonish look.  My Animation:  Step 1: Step 1 of topic 8 was to decide what animation style our character jumping would take on, stylised cartoon look or realistic. For my animati

Topic 7 tasked us with completing a blocking pass based on the timings and key poses from a video reference to create the action of a character realistically jumping over a gap and landing.  This week's lecture focused heavily on the use of realistic movement and anticipation when animating. Realistic movement is crucial when trying to depict human or even animal like movement in a way that does not pull the audience out of what they are watching. A way many animators achieve this is by using reference videos and images to guide them while animating. Movies such as The Avengers  (2012) and The Jungle Book  (2016) utilised this technique to create lifelike motion in their cgi characters.  Anticipation is also a major animation principle that aids in the creation of realistic animation. Anticipation is essentially a pose that is a preparation for the main action or movement. For example, when people jump, they do not stand upright and float into the air. Instead, they wind th

For the final topic, we were given three tasks that tackle the leaning concepts of  follow through, overlapping action, drag, ti ming, spacing, arcs and straight ahead animation. Task 1 had us use follow through and overlapping action to animate a pendulum swinging from screen left to screen right and to its original position. Task 2 had us demonstrate our understanding of follow through and overlapping action by animating a ball with a tail bouncing on the spot. For task 3, we were to use our bouncing ball rig from topic 4 and solve how a tail would move while the ball jumped over a gap.  Follow Through  Follow through is a key animation principle which explains that loosely connected parts of a character or object will continue moving once that character or object has stopped. Overlapping Action Overlapping action is a similar concept that describes how different appendages tend to move at different rates.  Follow through and overlapping action are key animation prin

In topic 4 we were given another two tasks that apply our understanding of arcs and stretch and squash to complete. Task 1 had us create a facial animation of a character either blinking or changing facial expression. Task 2 had us animate a ball character jumping over a gap and landing.  This week's lecture discussed the importance of animation principles such as squash and stretch, arcs and anticipation. Squash and stretch is a key animation principle that says anything composed of living flesh, no matter how bony, will show considerable movement within it's space in progressing through an action. This essentially means that a character or object, unless made of something that cannot squash or stretch, will squash and stretch when progressing through movements. This principle also applies to facial animation. Arcs are another key animation principle as the movements of most living creatures will follow a lightly circular path. Rarely will a person moving follow a