ABC 2, arcs, follow through, and overlapping Options

[amarillospider]

!!!! BOOTCAMP 2 !!!!

Bootcamp 1 was such a success, so I guess we'll continue. In the ask the pro threads over on CGChar the pro's often warn against trying to run before you can crawl, and emphasis building up your elementary animation muscles. So that's how I'm approaching this bootcamp idea, start small, with little projects that can be completed fairly quickly, and build understanding of some of the 12 principles of animation. (Michael Comet's has a decent tutorial on the 12 principles if you are unfamiliar with them) We'll work some of the principles with primitives, and then we'll move onto simple excercises with characters. Eventually we'll work more on acting and emotive skills, once we have an idea of basic animation physics.

The #1 thing you can do to improve your animation is: ... animate. So these excercises are simple and quick to help you dive right in instead of getting distracted with grand schemes and huge set ups. If your feeling inspired keep going, make up your own excercises, push yourself, try new things!! You gain more by just experimenting and learning by doing then you do by surfing forums and looking for that perfect tutorial (and I know because I spend way to much time doing those second two things )

Anyway bouncing balls are great because they force you to work with so many of the basic principals of animation (timing, ease, arcs, squash&stretch). But I'm a little tired of watching them. So let's move onto Tails.

Here's a little project
And the model you will need for it.

So here's our old friend the ball, but you aren't going to animate it, we're focusing on it's tail. This bootcamp is about arcs, follow through and overlapping action.

Excercise A: open the premade action. it's the ball swinging back and forth, looping every 40 frames. Your mission (if you choose to accept it) is to animate the tail being drug along by the ball. Full credit if you set it up to loop nicely. (This'll will help you later when you want to animate arms)

Excercise B: open up the premade chor. here the ball is swinging around at different speeds and then falling on the ground. Animate the tail to match.

Excercise C: if you hate my animating, it's to constrictive or boring for you, well then unhide the other bones in the ball and make up your own excercise with the tail. Try having it bounce across the screen, and maybe up and down some stairs or off a small ledge, for example. (and you get to work on your squash and stretch again, joy)


Advice:
Start at Tail 1 bone, get that one moving right, then move onto tail 2 and finally tail 3. Animate from the root of the heirarchy out.
Get out the dry erase marker and make sure your arcs are correct by drawing on your screen (doesn't work if you have a screen glare coating, but you could tape cling wrap on the screen and draw on that)
For A, think about a lazy figure 8, like basically a wide open C with a loop at each end.
If you prefer, change the starting point of Tail 1 (in the modeling window) so that it starts at the bottom of the ball instead of the center, it will change how the chain moves (super deluxe extra credit for doing all 3 excercises with the both types of chains)
Don't get to carried away on C, keep it managable.


Let's say due date is next Wednesday(Jan. 12th) before you go to bed. If you are reading this after that date please go ahead and do the excercises, you just might need to start a new thread to get critiques.

Remember, it's about learning, so try it, put it up, get some critiques, critique some others, improve yours, put it up, get some critiques, etc etc.

Cameron Miyasaki's ball animation also has a tail
Keith Lango has a quick tutorial on Arcs I believe

Have Fun!!

-Alonso

[ZachBG]

Woo hoo! See y'all tomorrow...

[Aminator]

[amarillospider]

good point Jack. It hadn't been working for a version or two so I got out of the habbit of using it.

[higginsdj]

Here's my version of Exercise A:

Exercise A

Cheers

[higginsdj]

Heres my version of Exercise B

Exercise B

Cheers

[starwarsguy]

There are no pre-made chors in mine of him swinging and stuff...

I CALLED TOO SOON! I HAD OPENED THE MODEL!

This post has been edited by starwarsguy: Jan 6 2005, 04:46 AM

[starwarsguy]

I finished awhile ago, but my 250free account won't work. Give me a sec.

[PixelDust]

higginsdj: Excellent job! Are you sure you need these lessons?

[starwarsguy]

Even if he doesn't, they're fun!

[MarkusAralius382]

Sweet! just downloaded the project and model, will give it a try when I get the chance

[nos3d13]

Dunno how to save those files, they are just txt te me. HELP

[Aminator]

I guess turning on dynamic constraint for tail 3 would be cheating

If you follow Alonso's wise advice aboutfirst animating tail 1, then tail 2, then tail 3, you'll probably find it easier to disable IK on 2 and 3. You can either do this in the chor (select the bone, then click on the Lock icon), or setup the model that way (open the model bone properties and change the, uh, whatever the IK setting is called).

It can also be easier to use the fancy rotate manipulator rather than the default bone dragging. Again, you can do this manually in the chor by hitting the R key while a bone is selected, or you can set the bone properties in the model to always use rotate-only manipulator.

[JBarrett]

David: Nice work on A. It feels a bit even, though. It could use more snap in the change of direction. Along with that, a little more overlap between the movement of each piece would be nice as it progresses, even getting into some subtle S-curve shapes.

B could definitely use a bit more tweaking. As with A, this could use a bit more tweaking in the tail swing in the early part. Also, the movement at the end of that section feels a bit too quick. It probably wouldn't come to a rest quite that quickly. Based on the flexibility you established for the tail in the early part of the clip, it should still be swinging a good bit when the ball starts into its fall movement. The flop after it falls is pretty good, but a hair too snappy. It also feels a bit generic to have the tail still pointing out straight behind the ball. Consider having the pieces roll to the side more after landing.

[nos3d13]

How come the project files are text, how do you save them?