ANP100 - Cubey Animation - Hassib Joya
Week 1:
For week 1 we have gone through timing and spacing through keyframed animations in Maya and how to animate.
Week 2:
For week 2 we have gone through timing and spacing through the Graph Editor which we use tangents and curves to manipulate the timing and spacing of the animations and we played around with Cubey to finally make his very first jump!
My First Jump Animation:
I finally animated Cubey to do his very first jump. I played around with the graph editor specifically the 'Translate Y' as Cubey is jumping up in the air. The animation goes for 20 frames and I utulised the squash and stretch with the tools given in the rig (Air Squash/Ground Squash) and made the jumping animation seemed more natural. I used weighted tangets to freely manipulate the Y Curves to make the jump more effective visually.
Cubey Animation Assessment 1 - Showcase & Rationale
I had a lot of fun playing around with Cubey in this first animation principles assessment. I will start off with the bad and and then finish with the good. The bad is I wish we had the file originally where Cubey could bend. That would have allowed me to animate him more naturally and give me more exploration and use for the character but I tried utulising what he could do in this animation.
Now for the good! As mentioned I had a lot of fun with him! I really enjoyed this assessment and learnt a lot from the classes we had! So, here is a breakdown of my animation process. I saw other brilliant students making their animations with jumping and doing all kinds of cool actions with Cubey & I wanted to do the same thing. I didn't have much ideas & but I went with the flow of the rig of Cubey and suddenly I made a series of things that Cubey is doing in the scene.
It starts with Cubey getting hit by a ball from the sky. I wanted the ball to have weight and give Cubey a sense of squishy-ness. Which is where one of the Principle's of animation comes to play.
Both principles, 'Squash & stretch' & 'Secondary Actions' is what I used to determine the weight of the ball based on it's speed as well as impact. Same goes for the jumping. A bit of 'Ground Squash' was used to anticipate his big jump in 0:02 seconds of the video. I also used 'Anticipation' It would be easy to miss but he does a quick preparation where he moves side to side to prepare his high jump. As Cubey hits the ball I gave him an 'Air Stretch' to 'Exaggerate' the impact as he hits the ball with his head in 0:02 - 0:30 it isn't properly shown in this cinematic but will make a follow up where he is shown to doing that action. I tried using the principle 'Appeal' for when he is kicking the ball in the air twice in a row. I am hoping I used that principle correctly.
Now for the good! As mentioned I had a lot of fun with him! I really enjoyed this assessment and learnt a lot from the classes we had! So, here is a breakdown of my animation process. I saw other brilliant students making their animations with jumping and doing all kinds of cool actions with Cubey & I wanted to do the same thing. I didn't have much ideas & but I went with the flow of the rig of Cubey and suddenly I made a series of things that Cubey is doing in the scene.
It starts with Cubey getting hit by a ball from the sky. I wanted the ball to have weight and give Cubey a sense of squishy-ness. Which is where one of the Principle's of animation comes to play.
Both principles, 'Squash & stretch' & 'Secondary Actions' is what I used to determine the weight of the ball based on it's speed as well as impact. Same goes for the jumping. A bit of 'Ground Squash' was used to anticipate his big jump in 0:02 seconds of the video. I also used 'Anticipation' It would be easy to miss but he does a quick preparation where he moves side to side to prepare his high jump. As Cubey hits the ball I gave him an 'Air Stretch' to 'Exaggerate' the impact as he hits the ball with his head in 0:02 - 0:30 it isn't properly shown in this cinematic but will make a follow up where he is shown to doing that action. I tried using the principle 'Appeal' for when he is kicking the ball in the air twice in a row. I am hoping I used that principle correctly.
In 0:04 he slides off to the side and almost falls, catches himself and then falls again. I tried using a bit of 'Follow through & Overlapping Action' which would have been useful if I had the Cubey bend file. However, I am happy with the way it turned out.
In 0:06 - 0:07 I liked the 'Secondary Action' again from this link https://www.creativebloq.com/advice/understand-the-12-principles-of-animation
I wanted to recreate that with Cubey. It was quite challenging so I used other means of resources to help me and I discovered the 'Motion Trail' tool in Maya to help me out with this process.
Finally I wanted to recreate the Pixar logo 'I' squash with a bit of flare and comedic purposes and used a lot of Squash & Stretch for this sequence for both the letter 'I' and Cubey.
THE GOOD: I tried utulising as much as I could with Cubey for all principles of animation but I believe I did the best I can as a beginner and I am proud with what I came up with I wish there was more flexibility with Cubey for bending and tilting but it might be overwhelming to some but I would have loved the option.
THE BAD: My animation isn't perfect. Some areas were a bit unnatural, and way too fast paced to my liking. A mistake I will fix in the future.
THE BAD: My animation isn't perfect. Some areas were a bit unnatural, and way too fast paced to my liking. A mistake I will fix in the future.
Overall, I had a lot of fun learning and discovering my strengths and flaws through this Cubey animation & can't wait to do more with him and/or more animations in the next assessment.
