Animation Principles

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3D Animation: Final Animation

This is my final animation - it shows the 3D version of my character’s alter-ego, where it performs a simple ball throw animation, which makes use of two principles of animation, anticipation and arcs.

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3D Animation: Animating

I looked at the 12 principles of animation and decided that I would go for anticipation - I would show this by making a ‘ball throw’ animation where the character would prepare for the action and build up energy before releasing the ball.

While animating my character, I also noticed that my animation shows another principle of animation, which would be arcs - as seen in the image, the throw creates an arc.

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3D Animation: Lighting

I played around with the lighting settings to get the correct amount of brightness and warmth and decided that I would go for a warmer colour instead of a cooler colour.

Along with the addition of lighting, I also added a camera to get the correct angle I want for when I start animating my model.

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3D Animation: Texturing

I wanted to use the same textures that I used for my concept art, but I ended up only using some of them because they looked really distorted when I applied them to my model, which is why I looked online for more textures that would work with the colour scheme of my character, so as I did with my concept art, I looked for metallic textures and edited them in Photoshop to change the colour/darkness/hue/saturation/etc. 

I tried using different textures to see which ones would work in which areas and to see if I needed to make any changes to the UV maps of that area. In some areas, I did not need to flatten the mapping because they looked good with the default/messy layout of the maps. But for the areas that didn’t look good with the untouched UV map layout, I had to flatten the mapping and move the polygons to get the correct texture I wanted.

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3D Animation: Rigging

To rig my character, I used the biped rig that 3ds Max already had ready, but I made some changes to the biped’s structure to suit my model better, such as reducing the spine links to 1, reducing the number of fingers to 4, number of toes to 1 and so on.

I connected the rig to my model by using the link tool to connect the correct parts to each other. After linking everything to the biped, I tested the model and the rig to see if there were any errors that I should fix later on.

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3D Animation: Texturing Practice

During our lectures, we were also taught how to adds textures to our models and as a practice, we were asked to create a simple building and then texture it.

I did this by adding the “Unwrap UVW” modifier and once in the UV editor, I selected the mapping tab and then “Flatten Mapping...” while the polygons are highlighted. I then exported the UV map into Photoshop, which is where I added the textures to the map and imported that map back into 3ds Max where I applied the texture unto the model.

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3D Animation - Hard Surface Modelling

I started to create the 3D model of my character using 3ds Max and I did this by hard surface modelling, so I used shapes to create my model. At first, I tried to create my model by using planes, which is what is normally used for organic modelling, but I found it difficult to get the look I wanted for my character. I was told to use shapes and do some hard surface modelling instead since my character was a robot and this method would make it easier and get the look I wanted for my character.

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3D Animation: Final Concept Art

After learning the basics of 3ds Max and how to navigate the software, I continued working on my character. I finished the sketch I drew a few weeks back and applied some of the techniques that our lecturer taught us, mainly photobashing and overpainting.

I traced over my sketch and added more solid lines, as well as more detail on some areas and making a few changes in some parts of the character that were not in the sketch.

I wanted my character to have a rusty look so I added metallic textures to the character and modified them to have a more brown-ish colour. I added the textures by looking them up online and resizing them to fit individual areas if the character and for some parts, I used more than one texture in an area and I did this by using the photobashing technique that was taught to us and used the mask layer in Photoshop.

Finally, I did some overpainting and applied some highlights in some areas to make them pop out.

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3D Animation: 3ds Max Tutorials

In these weeks, we were taught the basics on how to use 3ds Max. The main thing that was taught to us was the UI - we learnt how to navigate through the software and also how to create basic shapes and turn them into simple structures.

These were the two models I created as a practice run, low poly models of a dog and a castle.

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3D Animation: Concept Art Sketch

I started thinking of ideas on what my character could look like and after a few minutes, I decided that I would create a “complete” version of my previous character, meaning that I would turn him into something that resembles the structure of a human body, a biped.

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3D Animation: Introduction

In this week, we were asked to start a new project, which was to create an alter-ego of our character from the previous assignment - but this time, the character had to be in 3D and animated to showcase at least one of the 12 principles of animation.

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Stop Frame: Final Draft

This was our final version of our animation; it had around 723 frames with a speed of 12 fps and once exported as a video, met the 1 minute long duration requirement.

We made a lot of changes to our animation based on the previous attempts and everyone’s feedback and suggestions on both the first and second draft, although not all their suggestions were applied to our final animation.

Our animation now has a full duration of 60 seconds, which consists of three different scenes, the first scene being the part where we first see the train and the night sky and the second scene were we zoom into the middle carriage of the train where we see all three characters, which is also the main part of the animation, taking up most of the video and finally the third scene where we zoom out and show the train and the background once more with an ending of showing the train leaving the scene as we blur everything out and end the animation.

What’s new?

First Scene: (0:00 - 0:10)

We replaced the blue sky with a black sky as we decided that we wanted to stick to using strictly black and white silhouettes only.

The sky now has more stars and because we used black card instead of blue, the stars are now more obvious.

The clouds and the moon now move much slower compared to the first and second drafts.

The clouds now have a thin, white outline, which was done by cutting a bigger version of that cloud out of white card and then sticking those two layers together to create one cloud.

We decided to get rid of the small ghost as there were problems with using it such as it being a different silhouette/model compared to the main ghost. Our lecturer also pointed out that we weren’t actually allowed to use more than one version of our characters.

Instead of the ghost flying around and going through the train, we used smoke instead, while using the same time frame as the previous version where we had the ghost. The smoke was made by gluing tracing paper and black card together to create multiple sizes and shapes of smoke.

We also added a small shooting star using thin tracing paper, which makes a subtle appearance at around 0:07.

Second Scene: (0:11-0:48)

We added the rest of the train (left and right side of the carriage), while still keeping the carriage carrying our characters in the middle of the frame.

The second scene is now complete (we didn’t finish the entire second scene in our previous draft). The previous version finished at the part where my character picks up the sword - in the final version, we continued that story by returning the sword to the ghost and making friends with him.

Our characters show more movement and emotion compared to the previous versions of the animation.

The most notable examples of these movements would be the shaking (mainly at 0:23-0:25) when they see the ghost and the bowing (0:42-0:45).

Third Scene: (0:49-0:60)

This whole scene is new as the previous versions weren’t finished and didn’t have a third scene, although in this scene you see the same train, background, smoke, etc as you see in the first scene.

The train now starts to come off screen, which is the first and only time we have moved the train (it was stationary in previous scenes and previous drafts).

As the train starts to go off screen, the smoke output reduces, which was done by both slowly lowering the number of silhouettes used and also gradually changing the sizes of the silhouettes into smaller pieces.

We added another shooting star in this scene (~0:56), which was more obvious than the previous shooting star because in the previous one, people would be focusing on the train’s smoke whereas in this part of the scene, there is no smoke because the train starts to come off screen.

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Stop Frame: Second Draft Presentation

Once again, we presented our animation in front of the class and were given feedback; the comments they gave us will be listed (paraphrased) below, as well as some of the suggestions on how to improve our animation.

Positive:

It was a lot better than our first draft.

The addition of the blue sky made it look more like the animation occurred during the night.

The addition of the blue sky also fit in really well with black and white silhouettes.

The ghost is more obvious now and it looks less like a bird.

The transition from one scene to the next looked very good.

The silhouettes of the characters were very well made and the cuts and details on the characters were nice and delicate.

The movements of the characters, specially the arms and the head showed a lot of emotion even though some of their facial features weren’t that noticeable.

The tracing paper used on the ghost gave it a good effect.

The part where the ghost dropped his sword and became solid (by removing the tracing paper) was well executed.

Negative:

The clouds and the moon were still moving too fast.

The ‘mini’ ghost’s silhouette did not look like the main ghost and therefore looked like a different character i.e. the lower half of the mini ghost had sharper cuts compared to the main ghost.

The second scene (inside the train carriage) was “emptier” than the first scene as it did not have a background, mainly the blue sky.

The second scene’s location wasn’t obvious as it only showed the second carriage only and that the rest of the train was missing.

The animation was incomplete (no ending yet).

Suggestions:

Add some smoke to the train.

The second scene could look a bit more colourful by adding a background (similar to the colour the first scene).

The (main) ghost shouldn’t always be transparent and have the layer of tracing paper on top of it - instead, it should only have that layer if the ghost actually passes through the train (similar to the effect we used with the smaller ghost in the first scene and the main ghost’s sword going from transparent to solid in the second scene).

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Stop Frame: Second Draft

After getting feedback on our first animation, we created a new animation; the second draft now uses a dark blue background (with some stars), bigger clouds, bigger ghost and now includes the second scene where the camera focuses on the second carriage of the train, where my character and Paul’s character sees Darren’s character fly past our characters and go through the train.

The second draft has a much longer duration now as we included the second scene and we also used 12 fps now instead of the original 24 fps, which was the speed of our first attempt at this animation.

We also added a transition to go from one scene to the next by using tracing paper and different zoom and focus levels on the camera; we though this was a good idea as it was a smooth way of going from one scene to the next and would look better than showing the first scene and then instantly jumping onto the next scene.

In the second scene, all characters are being used; we ensured that each character would have some kind of movement and we did this by cutting slits in the shoulder and elbow area to allow movements using the arms for my character and then cutting the neck and using dark coloured thread as arms for Paul’s character and finally using Blu Tack to join the upper and lower section of Darren’s character as we used two separate cutouts for his character and once again, to show transparency in Darren’s character, we added a layer of tracing paper on top of the silhouette.

To show emotion, we used the arms for my character and Paul’s character as well as moving his character’s head around. We also tilted our characters sideways for some parts of the animation; a slight tilt when moving from one side of the train’s carriage to another and a bigger tilt when the ghost comes into the scene.

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Stop Frame: First Draft Presentation

After showing the first draft to the class, they gave us feedback and although they liked the silhouettes and the detail in the cuts, there were some things we could improve upon and most of their comments were about the background i.e. clouds, moon and mountains where moving too fast, which we agreed upon, so we decided to use 12 fps on our next draft to slow things down as we used 24 fps on our first draft.

Another comment was on the ghost; some said that they didn’t notice it at first and that it looked less as a ghost, but more of a bird, so we decided to cut out a new silhouette for the ghost in our next draft.

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Stop Frame: First Draft

We started playing around with the silhouettes and the software to see what our animation would look like, so we just made a short one as our starting point (8 seconds) and present it to the class and get some feedback and apply them to our next draft.

We created an animation based on our storyboard, which had a starting sequence where you see the train with the background and a few seconds later, a ghost comes in and does a loop and then goes off-screen.

We used tracing paper and layering it on top of the ghost’s silhouette once it goes through the train to create a transparency effect.

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Stop Frame: Silhouette

I started cutting out the silhouette of my character based on a picture of my character and I sketched a drawn version of my silhouette on normal A4 paper. 

I measured my actual character and drew a silhouette version based on those measurements, although I had to make the silhouette slightly smaller so that it would be in proportion with the other characters as well as the train’s carriage.

After spending a few minutes practising on how to cut silhouettes and getting the measurements correctly, I ended up with this silhouette, which is made of black paper and was cut using scissors and a precision knife; I used the scissors to cut the outline of my character and the knife to cut the smaller areas of the paper, such as the rib cage.

While cutting the silhouette, I thought about cutting small slits on the shoulder and the elbow to allow movement during the animation.