Two for the price of one!

Im going to do my best to keep this going over the next few weeks but believe it or not, next week is already mid term! (Mouth drops) I will keep you up to date as many projects are coming together as well as the new website. Should have that set to go soon! Anyway I wanted to share two pieces that I worked on recently and really had a blast working on.

First is movement along a path. Here I had some fun figuring out how to work the camera within a first person point of view. I did use some inspiration from a game style I was a fan of called Mirrors Edge. The trailer for that can be viewed here:



Now obviously, there was no way I was going to pull off too much in 20+ seconds but I wanted to try on focusing on the basics. How a person rocks back and forth slightly but also keeping thing in sight. How a person may land and stutter close to the edge of something and look down before turning to the next location.

Final product can be found here:


The following is my most recent work that I have to say was the most frustrating yet the most fun. This was the beginning, I mean just a taste of character animation. The challenge here as to just create a scene of a jump. I pulled inspiration from all the famous adventure seeker type scenes from film. The difficult part was getting the walk down. If we just focused on the arms and legs swaying back and forth, it would look too robotic. Also its important to focus in on the ease in and ease out of motion to make it look natural. Had some fun with this one and I hope you enjoy!

Motion through Bouncing Balls

This past weeks assignment was a lot of fun exploring a pretty basic subject matter, three bouncing balls. The concept was to take three balls of different weights and sizes and apply them to a scene. Now for some reason I immediately thought of this video I saw awhile back:

First off, that guy is extremely talented! Along with several other people on you tube. Check out amazing soccer kicks sometime, it's crazy! So I immediately thought of focusing on this event and two other sports with balls that have varying weights. Those being bocce and a game called cornhole, which apparently isn't as widely known as I thought. So I started doing some research on slow mo capture videos of balls being hit or thrown against the wall. I have to say its pretty wild! Check out a few that I came across:

The golf ball still blows my mind! Now obviously, to the human eye, we can't see that movement until it slowed down with a camera. This does not mean that it doesn't make a difference in animation. In order to get the correct feel of a ball rolling or bouncing, we need to think about the minor details in its movement. How does the ball move when its coming in? How does it react when it hits the ground? Is their a slight bump to objects? Also, how do those objects react? Its amazing the questions that just go into three bouncing balls but it helps make the most convincing arguments. Therefore, I have always felt it necessary to analyze what your working on and break it down into segments. In this case, focus your segment on the timeline editor and then analyze the graph sequences. This will then allow you to manipulate the curves and its effects on the ball within the environment. I spent a lot of time focusing on the bocce balls and how they would slow down at different moments and also how movement would lead into another event.

It is important to keep the viewer intrigued as to what is going on in the scene. Originally I had a stationary camera without a slight change at the end. The main comment I received in critique was "Whats going on in the background?" Therefore, I decided to move the camera and give it a nice subtle zoomed in shot to help focus on what was exactly going on in the back. I tried to have something bleed into the next portion of the animation. Meaning, the plank of wood falls around the timing of the ball entering the scene and the bocce ball slows down as the hackie sack enters. Then a quick movement of the camera. Its amazing what a camera set up can do to a scene but that is another topic I can spend hours discussing!

The following was the result after a class critique:

I do apologize for the darkness. It normally is a bit lighter before being compressed. I hope to figure out some new techniques in lighting after catching up on some of the lighting effects. Overall I was happy after adjusting the animation after the critique. There are still some minor things I would like to have finessed such as the garbage can movement after the soccer ball hits and the angle of the bocce ball.

It was interesting to explore textures with this project. Though, I have learned to approach texturing in a different way. Hopefully I will be able to pull that together for this weeks assignment.

Happy 10-10-10! CRAZY HUH!

Punt!

I swear this will have more relevance by tuesday. Who knew a garbage can could have so many vertex points, edges, and more! A lot of clean up to do this still along with the rest of the scene. Its gonna be a busy weekend!