Prior to creating and animating our own rigs for the mech, we needed to complete one extra task, create a 5s animation with object interaction. For this task we will be using the same rig and model as we previously used for the jumping animation. As are now fairly familiar with this rig creating the animation should be pretty simple.
For my animation I decided to have our character walk in and pick up a log and proceed to walk out of the scene. I decided on a log as it will allow me to practice how to animate something to create the illusion of weight. Prior to starting to block out the animation we create simple storyboards to deliver our idea to our lecturer.
For my animation I decided to have our character walk in and pick up a log and proceed to walk out of the scene. I decided on a log as it will allow me to practice how to animate something to create the illusion of weight. Prior to starting to block out the animation we create simple storyboards to deliver our idea to our lecturer.
After creating the storyboard I quickly moved into Maya to begin blocking out the main poses for this animation. This part was fairly straightforward as I, for the most part, followed my storyboard. The part that took the longest was the lifting of the log. I tweaked this part multiple times with feedback from both my lecturer and peers to make it as believable as possible. A decision I made to help make it feel more realistic was to make each step take more frames after he's picked up the object. By doing this I felt that it gave the sense that the character is now carrying After tweaking for a while I felt that it finally looked like he was lifting a heavy object, once I was happy with the basic motion and timing of scene, I moved onto the inbetweens.
The inbetweens help smooth out the animation, as well help give the character a sense of weight with each step. After adding the inbetweens the animation is almost complete, only some minor tweaks to the tangents in the graph editor are needed. In the graph editor I helped apply the basic animation principle of slow in slow out to help make the animation feel more realistic.
Here is the final animation .
I felt that doing this animation helped teach me many aspects of animating. In this short clip I applied the basic principles such as arcing motions and slow in and out to help creating a realistic feel. Although my final trailer idea doesn't include any object interaction, I felt this practice was very beneficial to create a firmer grasp on animating.