Animation BootCamp 1, the Original Options

[amarillospider]

Hey everyone,

I just won Rodney's little give away, so I'm trying to make it worth his while by becoming a more active community member.

Anyway, we are not doing enough animation as a community, or at least not sharing it enough. After all we are using ANIMATION:Master. It seems to me that part of the reason is everyone gets distracted with trying to build the perfect model and rig and then never gets around to developing their animation skills.

Therefore I propose Animation Boot Camp!

We'll develop our skills together doing basic, Short, exercises. If your new to animation this is your chance to learn with peers. If your old to animation, this is your chance to get back to basics. I'm thinking we'll start small, and then work up to more and more complex ideas, until we are all making our own feature length films , or at least we get more entries to the Animation contest out there.

So we'll start with bouncing balls. What your to for bouncing balls? Well Check this out (bottom of the page) That's Cameron Miyasaki , Pixar employee, check out how much character he squeezes out of spheres who have no limbs or faces.

Or here's my less accomplished example.

So here's a little project file that has 2 balls already rigged up and in a chor ready to go. They have 2 nulls: Null1 just controls where the base of the ball is, use that one to move the ball around. Null2 called "Squetch" lets you squash and stretch the ball, move it up the ball stretches, move it down the ball squashes. (I made this with expressions (which I don't really understand but learned from this tutorial) and then did a little null manipulater for it (you can use the pose slider if you prefer)) Or make your own, I'm just trying to make it easy.


So the assignment:
Excercise A: drop both balls onto the screen, make one super rubbery, make the other heavy like a canonball. Let them bounce to a stand still.

Excercise B: bounce the balls across the screen, like they're going somewhere. Make them of different material's

Excercise C, extra credit: try and give the balls different personality and have them have an interaction. Throw in props if you want. Keep this short! 200 frames max.

A and B you should be able to do in one sitting. When your done post it in this thread and we'll critique each other.

The trick to this kind of thing is start small and build up your skill level, instead of starting a huge epic project right away.

DUE DATE: Wed Jan 5 before you go to bed. Let's have a due date so we won't procrastinate and put it off. Then we'll critique on Thursday. (If your are reading this thread after the due date and want to try it, post your excercise in a new thread so it can get critiqued)

Remember to think about:
Timing
Ease In and Out (or Slow In and Out)
Arcs
Anticipation
Exaggeration
Squash and Stretch


Use your curve editors. If you have any questions, or are having trouble, post in this thread and the forum will help. Then on Thursday we'll all critique each other and hopefully improve.

Please keep the files small!!! We have some none broadband members (like me) and I usually ignore anything over 1MB, and this excercise should be pretty small.

There's some bouncy sounds in the project, use 'em if you want but remember this is about animation skills.

If there's interest in this we'll keep going. Getting to more elaborate things: juice boxes, bipeds doing simple stuff, lip synch work, huge elaborate battle scenes, giant group projects, the skies the limit.

If there's no interst, well it'll die here.


Get to work! And have fun.

-Alonso

[ZachBG]

Hot damn, Alonso! Great idea!

[CreativeAustinYa...]

I'll give it a go. Should be interesting to see what people can come up with.

Steve P.

[starwarsguy]

Yeah! Awesome idea!

[Hutch]

Sounds fun and I hope I get some time for it. One question: Why the Student forum? I would never have read this if you had not linked from a different thread.

[starwarsguy]

So we just post it here? I love this idea. You exactly described my animation situation.

[amarillospider]

Yay, people!

I figured the student forum was most appropriate since it's about learning and improving, and it wouldn't get lost as quick.

Timewise it shouldn't take to long, you could probably bust something out quick in 1/2 hour per excercise, maybe less if you have some experience.

Go ahead and post your results in this thread Kyle, that way we can keep them all together. Post in progress work too if your looking for critiques or advice.

GO GO GO

-Alonso

[-TC-]

Great Idea Alonso
Just downloaded the project, im workin on some squash and stretches now

[starwarsguy]

I'm working, too. I've never done squash and stretch. How did I miss it? I think someone's trying to foil me...

I'm working like crazy. Thanks Alonso, I was so bored and had a need for this lesson. Let boot camp carry on!

This post has been edited by starwarsguy: Jan 1 2005, 05:03 PM

[.:shortdog:.]

Working on it right now, too! Great idea!

[starwarsguy]

DONE! I've been working on it since I saw this post! Exercise C is a little bit fast, so you may have to go frame by frame, because I was trying to keep it in your time range. In fact, I want you to go frame by frame after you wtach it so you can tell what's going on.

Right-click this link and save target, as it's on angelfire:

BallExercisesA-C

(this is a zip folder that contains .MOVs of Exercises A, B, and C)


Thanks for this boot camp idea. I haven't animated in awhile and I feel that this is really helping me out.

[nos3d13]

Haha thats kinda scary it was like you were talking exactly to me, Mr procrastinator with the exact situation you showed...... im getting to it.

[starwarsguy]

lol

[Zaryin]

Hey Kyle, your animations turned out great. I think you could have had a little more squash and streth in there, or made it last loner. And C was a little quick. But they were great.

[paulmcg1]

Now this is going to be awsome! Im gonna follow this till the end . Going to do the exercises when I get up in the morning. Ta-TA

Paul