Here is my documentation of following the tutorial for blocking out and animating a rigged character shifting its weight from side to side. As always, I found this informative in terms of how (relatively) human anatomy prepares for its movements, its interaction with weight in terms of physics, and the idiosyncratic body language imbued even in small movements like this one. It’s especially interesting and illuminating to me how animators use movement to communicate identity, emotion, and personality in these movements in a way that the conscious mind behind an untrained eye wouldn’t notice, but the subconscious recognises as significant.
The process began with ‘blocking’ out the movements in five frame increments; I like working like this – it sets out the bare bones of how things will look in the graph editor in such a way that editing it later is straight forward.
This is the first iteration of the fully animated weight shift from start to finish. Every movement is happening at 5 frame increments, but the result is that the ball with legs shifts its weight from side to side. I’d say this looks alright, but it would be an interesting challenge to try to communicate nervous energy in the same movement, as the ball in this animation looks fairly confident.As can be seen in the graph editor at the bottom, some keyframes have been spaced out more than others to prolong certain movements in line with how gravity would interact with a body moving in this way. Other movements are shortened to communicate the necessary rushing as gravity drags the body down. I was surprised again with the amount of personality communicated by this lightning and lengthening of certain movements, it puts a spring in the step of the rig. (I apologise for the massive green frame on one side of the video – I don’t know why that’s there and when I try to crop it out it disappears).The same sequence from the side.I’d noticed that somehow I’d started my animation sequence on the wrong pose instead of a neutral one, so I moved my sequence back by a few frames and input a neutral pose at the start, then a slight shift to the left before the initial bigger shift to the right. I also put a polygon cube under the rig to act as a floor for the scene as I’d just learned we were meant to be doing that the whole time.On first editing my work into spline from blocking, it appeared I’d created a monster. The joints moved seemingly of their own volition and the rig looked possessed.
I’d hoped to continue editing the graph to improve the stepped to spline transition, but my file stopped recognising the reference (the rig) and refused to open the Maya file with the rig even after locating the reference in my hard drive, which essentially dumped all my progress. So I will have to start again.
“Auteur theory is a theoretical approach that says the director is the major creative force behind a movie. “Auteurs” infuse films with their singular perspectives and trademark visual styles when translating them from screenplays to the screen. Critics use auteur theory to explore the ways these directors act as authors of their films.” (Hellerman, J. 2024)
The theory of Auteurism was an offshoot of the idea that directors leave their signature on the films they make through their use of lighting, staging, editing and casting. It also gave way to the idea that stories from more diverse backgrounds were worth telling, rather than just those with the socioeconomic means to make films. To be described as an Auteur according to the original definition, a director must be instantly recognisable through their work, consistent in their creative voice and style, and transparent in their point of view as a storyteller. They must leave their mark on the films the direct with, or in spite of studio approval.
The notion of Auteurism applies to animation in a way that can be troublesome to analyse: animation production echoes and imitates the conditions of industrial film production, but it also offers the possibility for a film-maker to operate almost entirely alone. It could be argued that animation is the most auteurist film discipline as it necessitates a collaborative adherence to a single creative vision and stylistic language for the sake of cohesion. (Wells 2002: 73).
Andrew Sarris posited that the director’s role was to be a technician, a stylist, and an auteur (Sarris, A. 1962). Considering how recognisable the work of certain directors is to familiar audiences based on aesthetics, signature filters, use of sound design, cast, and/or cinematography, I would say this is an accurate summation of the issue of the auteur:
Paule Kael, however, disagrees with Sarris and claims that directors who leave such an indelible mark on their work depend on obvious and repetitive devices as a crutch, “she also considers it to be a complete misunderstanding of the necessarily talents required for the production of art as many great directors violate rules of technical competence.” (Mairs, 2024). While I find this critique interesting and somewhat compelling, specifically claiming that some directors rely on repetition of obvious devices to distinguish their work as their own, I feel as a creative person that after reaching a certain level of technical proficiency we gain a sense of when to bend and break certain rules to make a point. It’s expected that an illustrator, for example, develops their own style of drawing, even if they’re expected to be flexible in their work for specific purposes, e.g. textbooks, publishing, etc.
Looking at film production as a result of many moving parts working in unison, however, could be argued to further muddy the waters surrounding the extent of auteurship as far as directors are concerned: •‘refurbished by the absence of singular and transcendental notions of the artist. For once we let go of such essentialist notions of art-making, a whole host of potential auteurs emerge from the theoretical sidelines: creative personnel, agencies, even corporations whose influence on the art of cinema cannot be recognised by the stifling romanticism of previous conceptions of auteurism’ (Watson, 2012, p. 162).
According to Paul Wells, an auteur is “a person who prompts and execute the core themes, techniques and expressive agendas of a film… around whom the key enunciative techniques and meanings of a film accrue and find implied cohesion… provides the organising principles of textual practices to engage with, and create motivated spectatorial positions.” (Wells, 2002: 73)
In the vein of critiquing animation’s relationship to auteurism and the extent to which individual animators – or even colossal corporate animation houses such as Disney – can be considered auteurs, Hayao Miyazaki makes for an interesting case study. As the animator behind Studio Ghibli’s most globally recognised and beloved characters, Miyazaki is certainly an auteur, and the purpose behind Studio Ghibli’s work may be the best justification for this: “Many of my movies have strong female leads — brave, self-sufficient girls that don’t think twice about fighting for what they believe in with all their heart. They’ll need a friend, or a supporter, but never a savior.” (Basil, M. 2024).
Basil, M. for MovieWeb (2024) The Importance of Female Characters in Hayao Miyazaki’s Films. Available at: https://movieweb.com/female-characters-hayao-miyazaki-films/#:~:text=To%20quote%20the%20animator%20in,%2C%20but%20never%20a%20savior.%E2%80%9D (Accessed: 13/11/2024).
Having only recently moved to London, I’d been so impressed by the outrageously creative and eye catching window displays in the touristic shopping areas, I decided to go back and properly inspect them including the products they’re meant to be advertising. These are four of the Christmas visual merchandising displays on the street facing exterior of Fortnum & Mason – a tourist hotspot for certain. The animals entered in each window are paper and plastic sculptures.
The above is one of my favourite windows from the Fortnum display, and below I’ve edited together two videos of animated window displays. I’d like to keep my work as simple as possible in order to give myself the best possible chance of finishing it to a high standard, and the below moving windows inspired me in that sense.
I included the video above to show the subtle, small animatronic movements in some of the display windows. I envision my own work being slightly more complex than this but it’s a good starting point for me to generate ideas.
Above I’ve edited together two photographs I took of the Liberty display dedicated to Wicked (film) coming out this year. These displays contain fresh flowers as one of the signature products Liberty is known for, I was astounded at the creativity and clever use of colour contrast to generate instantly recognisable elements reminiscent of the film’s best known posters and set designs. Left: wicked witch of the West meets the good witch of the East, right: follow the yellow brick road.
The flower based display above impressed me so much, it’s hard to imagine a better use of Liberty’s resources for the sake of promoting this film release.
Below is included the lowest quality image in this collection (it was taken indoors and the store was too bright to avoid the reflection seen in the glass) but the display itself is so clever and creative I decided to include it anyway. The display perfectly encapsulates the meaning of what it’s meant to be showcasing, the dark blue acts as a perfect contrast to the gold jewellery encased within, and the thorn motifs tie in effortlessly with the velveteen forest surroundings. This small display is the perfect starting point for me to begin sketching ideas and creating assets for working in 3D, as it’s so easy to imagine how it would move and the design itself speaks to so many of the things I like.
We Dress A Certain Way: an animator’s exploration of fashion and people watching. I found this article on It’sNiceThat about Jiaqi Wang’s street style based game, the project started out as a simple walking cycle with twelve characters wearing different outfits based on the animator’s observations of people walking down the street, but eventually transformed into a desktop game: “Sometimes it can be hard for us to connect to an audience with our art, but my making it interactive is like a warm invitation welcoming them into your world.” (Clarke, Y. A., 2024).
I messed about with the desktop version for a while to understand the game and came to the conclusion that it’s a fun and whimsical way to express the artist’s interest in street style, as well as a creative way to invite other people into her introverted world of passive observation over active engagement. I thought it was an interesting way to combine fashion and animation, and while I’m not planning on creating anything similar to this project, I recognise the importance of the starting point being something that genuinely inspires and interests me, while respecting my own limits with regards to engagement and technological ability.
Wang, J. (2024) JiaqiWang. [Screenshot] Available at: https://www.jiaqiwang.org/about/ (Accessed: 07/11/2024). My composition crowding my favourite outfits from the game together.
Yinka Ilori collection brought to life by Jon Frier’s unique stop motion basketball animation, where the basketball enters another dimension on its journey through the net. Ilori’s collection for Autumn/Winter 2023 featured this collection within a collection which was basketball themed, based on Ilori’s experiences growing up around the sport’s culture (Gorny, L. 2023). Stop motion makes sense as a creative choice for a fashion related animation, considering the ease with which textural elements can be woven into the production. I liked the silly character design of the basketball also.
On further exploration I saw that Yinka Ilori is also known for his pop-up shops, where he takes over a space with his full creative force in order to best showcase his design works for the right audience, and his use of bold, maximalist colour serves as an eye grabbing invitation to the uninformed passer by:
Loewe have been long time collaborators with Studio Ghibli to create dreamy ready-to-wear and accessories collections based on the animation studio’s most beloved characters, but also beautiful pop-ups around London to welcome these collections onto the scene.
It’s not lost on me that these Loewe X Studio Ghibli displays are so effective due to the popularity and recognisability of the Studio Ghibli characters and scenery, but even with this in mind they are my favourite examples in this short research compilation. It’s not just the association with the Ghibli films, but their sheer commitment to bringing it to life, completely transforming the space to best feature the collections, and the whimsical juxtaposition of the titular moving castle against the cold, sterile interior of the ultra-modern Selfridges. The displays are more like set design than visual merchandising considering their scale, commitment and attention to detail.
To begin this lecture we’re given a definition of abstract as a basis for understanding the media we are to dissect: the most succinct definition of abstract would be that it depicts something that can only be appreciated intellectually, as opposed to a concrete, measurable concept, object or event. My favourite definition given, however, was that “[to abstract is] To develop a line of thought from a concrete reality to a general principle or an intellectual idea” (Mairs, 2024), because I think this process of abstraction and how it is achieved is particularly pertinent to animators and designers, whose purpose professionally is to bring a theoretical world of abstract, distant concepts and happenings unbound by the laws of the universe to life through colour and motion.
Formative abstraction is essentially the process of abstracting existing concepts and bringing abstract concepts into relative being – one in which the artist’s involvement is “essentially investigative and may not have a predetermined outcome but must be grounded in the intellectual pursuit of applying a theory or initial objective… there is an integral link between conceptual application and technical advancement in the innovation of film in particular”. (Mairs, 2024).
This example of a conceptually abstract short film by Max Hattler, Serial Parallels, I initially on watching might be a reference to parallel universe theory, positioning each window and balcony as a door to a universe as defined and organised by the family who resides within. It wasn’t until I realised Hattler was uploading his own work onto Vimeo that I saw the description he wrote himself, proving me completely wrong:
“This experimental animation by Max Hattler approaches Hong Kong’s built environment from the conceptual perspective of celluloid film, by applying the technique of film animation to the photographic image. The city’s signature architecture of horizon-eclipsing housing estates is reimagined as parallel rows of film strips: Serial Parallels.
“This captivating architectural animation draws a dizzying portrait of Hong Kong’s urban environment. Through the lens of the animated film, each floor or window corresponds to a film frame. The colors follow one another in a repetitive and rhythmic movement that plunges us into a meditative state that is both gentle and anxiety-provoking… It is only when the sky appears to us that we can finally breathe the air we desperately miss as we climb the floors of these overcrowded towers.” Jury Statement, Honorary Mention (Computer Animation), Prix Ars Electronica, 2020″. Max Hattler (2019) Serial Parallels (2019, Max Hattler). 19 August. Available at Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/589324922 (Accessed: 11/10/2024). Anxiety-provoking indeed, watching the short film makes me feel trapped in a humid, grey, indifferent cityscape and devoid of any sense of direction with no sky to tell me how far I am from breaking the surface.
Max Hattler (2012) X (by Max Hattler) KXFS Canal Commission. 10 September. Available at Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rSLcNznix4&list=PLEC82AAAA3A1A4567 (Accessed: 11/10/2024).
The embedded video links to an abstract, conceptual film by Max Hattler titled X, an animated water projection depicting the seemingly random, fluid transformation and division of shapes, the storyline, purpose and patterns behind which are all intangible and ambiguous. This note from the creator provides almost no context: “The unknown X becomes a whole symphony of shapes… In a universe where everything is by itself yet can intersect with each other, cross-action seems the best way to solve an unknown equation.” (Hattler, M. (2012) MaxHattler. Available at: http://www.maxhattler.com/x/ (Accessed: 11/10/2024).) I liked watching this, while it essentially leads nowhere and serves a purpose beyond my immediate comprehension, I found the film futuristic in aesthetic and communication style, and the use of water projection incredibly clever – I’m never comfortable providing a definitive read on media such as this because I’m always convinced the key is in the abstraction, as in there’s almost certainly a point to it that I’m missing, communicated in intentionally obfuscated style to make fools of people like me.
Nathan Boey (2022) Pass the Ball. 24 January. Available at Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/669475821 (Accessed: 11/10/2024).
The above video is a collaborative project between 40 animators, all responding to the same concept: catch the ball and throw it to someone in another country. I loved this video, I love seeing the sometimes extreme contrast between different people’s work, how they respond to such an open-ended concept, and how they articulate their ideas as creative and independent thinkers. There’s also something especially beautiful about seeing artists in such a competitive field volley between each other and work in a way that supports the previous person’s vision, rather than trying to compete in order to outshine each other. In some cases, the animators chose to respond to the brief in a way that obfuscates and abstracts the original intention, turning the ball into something else entirely for the sake of their creative communication style or treating it in ways that defy the laws of physics (squashing it like an insect, turning it into a planet, plucking it from the sky)
Max Hattler (2012) X (by Max Hattler) KXFS Canal Commission. 10 September. Available at Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rSLcNznix4&list=PLEC82AAAA3A1A4567 (Accessed: 11/10/2024).
Max Hattler (2019) Serial Parallels (2019, Max Hattler). 19 August. Available at Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/589324922 (Accessed: 11/10/2024).
Nathan Boey (2022) Pass the Ball. 24 January. Available at Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/669475821 (Accessed: 11/10/2024).
Nigel Mairs (2024) ‘Week 3: The Avant Garde. Experimental, Abstract Constructs and Analysis’ [Lecture]. PU002333: MA 3D Computer Animation: Design for Animation, Narrative Structures and Film Language. London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. 10 October.
We also were due to receive feedback today on our projects in progress, and knowing this would be the case before entering the lesson it had truly dawned on me how far behind I was as a result of the personal difficulties I’d been trying and failing to work in spite of. As usual, though, I felt more capable after speaking to Serra about the directions my work could potentially take. Having lived in London for all of a week I’d recently explored some of the city centre, taking particular note of the changing shop displays in preparation for Christmas – a somewhat dull family tradition was checking out the Harrods and Fortnum display windows in the lead up to Christmas for their ingenuity. As a fashion illustration graduate I’m generally inspired by and interested in branding and corporate visual merchandising, and the application of 3D digital animation to these areas of industry, so I’m deciding to move my research and initial ideas in this direction.
A Dior Winter jewellery display in Harrods I particularly liked, London, November 2024
I was shown this previous student’s work because she similarly chose to produce animated work relevant to advertising and product design. I actually love it and felt inspired by it, she created a product to be cheeky and silly, produced a fun animated feature of that product which manages to be funny, ironic and frivolous while still showcasing impressive conceptual, 3D technical and animation skills. As an LCF graduate, committing to a project like this which features product design and animation seems much more doable to me in terms of the practical undertaking, and such a project appeals to me more as someone who thinks in terms of product portfolios more than character design.
The two images above are from a 2024 campaign by Gentle Monster, a Korean eyewear brand known for their unique and intensely creative takeover of spaces for the sake of visual merchandising and setting a scene to surround their collections for pop-up sales. By entirely taking over the sales space, Gentle Monster’s innovative merchandising team invite their clients to step into their creative vision and share the inspiration behind their design ideas – it’s a more immersive version of visual merchandising, making a sensory experience of browsing the new collection.
The above three images are also from Gentle Monster’s website but depict their 2022 pop-up display commemorating their collaboration with K-pop group BlackPink’s Jennie – intended to recreate an imaginary, beautiful village scene. This example in particular stood out to me because not only is it similarly immersive like the earlier example of Gentle Monster’s work listed, but because of the level of detail and the way this scene particularly lends itself to animation – it’s easy to imagine what could be done with a 3D scene like this.
Serra Ozdemir (2024) ‘3D Computer Animation Fundamentals: Week 7, Dynamic Lighting in UE’ [Lecture]. PU002332: 3D Computer Animation Fundamentals. London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. 6 November.
Messages can be imbued into moving image media through subliminal or masked content, overt/propagandist intent, persuasive targets such as commercial and advertising media, documentary and investigative content, and through independent, more personal media. Of these potentialities I was most interested in subliminal messaging in media – it can be argued that subliminal messaging needn’t be as pernicious as a single frame displaying the intended message, but also through the power of suggestion harnessed by advertising. This concept is something I’d like to research further, particularly because subliminal messaging has been banned for decades.
Politics shape what gets put into media, critical thinking must be applied to discern whether media outlets are biased politically. Conversely, media can shape politics and shift the narrative on divisive social issues, a somewhat recent example that comes to mind is the Netflix Limited series When They See Us, which drew global attention to an almost forgotten case of miscarriage of justice in the US which saw the lives of five innocent men irreparably altered and shone a spotlight on systemic racism in the United States. Media like this, it could be argued, had an impact on the events which would follow in years to follow where Black Lives Matter protests would reverberate around the world in response to the murder of George Floyd.
Alaosnus (2012) ‘Neighbours’ (1952) Academy Award-Winning Short film by Norman McLaren. 9 February. Available at: Youtube / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-o9dYwro_Q (Accessed: 25/10/2024).
I embedded the above videos because they both feature messages about war and colonialism. We were shown each of these films during the lecture, Neighbours by Norman McLaren is a stop motion from 1952 – two men seem to get high from smelling a dandelion in front of their property and then become increasingly defensive over their individual entitlement to it as a resource. The film was banned for its violence. It struck me as analogous for addiction and its effects on human behaviour, or colonialism and division of resources previously understood to be universal/free leading to war and violence. There is a scene (which may have led to the ban) where women and infants are killed as an indirect result of the violence that breaks out, most likely alluding to war and civilian casualties, possibly the intergenerational effects of war on soldiers who return home unable to adjust to normal life.
Britannia, by Joanna Quinn, featured below Neighbours centres the quintessential British Bulldog literally manually extracting resources from all over the world and using them to fashion and gorge himself. Sexual violence is portrayed explicitly against indigenous populations, the Bulldog strings people across his neck and wears them, he takes tea from Asia and wears a teapot as a crown analogously bastardising a resource from another part of the world in order to make it a part of his identity. The messaging is portrayed through metamorphosis, the messages contained within this short film could not have been portrayed as succinctly through any other medium.
Tower by Keith Maitland, an animated documentary centred around the 1966 mass shooting at the University of Texas perpetrated by Charles Whitman, where Whitman climbed to the top of the campus tower and shot indiscriminately into the crowd below, hitting 49 people and killing 17. The intention of the film was to shift the focus of the atrocity from the perpetrator to the victims, and several survivors were interviewed for the documentary. The violence of the incident could not have been depicted so respectfully through live action, the tone of the film would be changed completely if it was not animated. I understand the point that animated and documentary may strike a person as oxymoronic at first, but this particular film I think had to be animated. The sheer violence and despair of the incident being documented necessitates the separation from reality afforded only to animation.
There is an animated scene in the Netflix series Black Earth Rising which reminds me of this, where the Rwandan genocide is being depicted directly for the first time instead of simply alluded to in dialogue between characters, and the use of animation facilitated a level of honesty that would have been eclipsed totally by the violence if live action had been used instead. A point can be made through animation without alienating the viewer with explicit depictions of violence and suffering, it can also serve as a way around censorship. The heartbreaking animated sequence is attached here:
Jon Mauk (2016) “Abductees” – Animation [HQ] – A Film by Paul Vester (1995). 23 April. Available at: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_UgJFZSRec (Accessed: 25/10/2025).
Paul Vester – Abductees: ‘Liverpool Style’ animated work (no cell animation, directly onto paper, experimental and rough), student work made up of several different animation styles about alien abduction. This film is a collection of animated responses to the interviews with alleged abductees. Bizarrely think I’ve seen this before, it was running at 3am when I couldn’t sleep. My initial response was that the schizophrenic style of the film when viewed as a sum of so many different, seemingly detached styles of animation, in some cases portraying subject matter entirely separate from the interviewee testimonies, seems almost suggestive of the disorganised and distressed mental state of the individuals speaking within. I can’t say whether that was intentional on the part of Vester, but it makes for a somewhat jarring and hypnotic watch.
I intend to do further research into subliminal messaging from before and after the ban as a potential start to my research topic. I also am at the stage of considering research questions to work from.
References
Alaosnus (2012) ‘Neighbours’ (1952) Academy Award-Winning Short film by Norman McLaren. 9 February. Available at: Youtube / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-o9dYwro_Q (Accessed: 25/10/2024).
Jon Mauk (2016) “Abductees” – Animation [HQ] – A Film by Paul Vester (1995). 23 April. Available at: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_UgJFZSRec (Accessed: 25/10/2025).
Nigel Mairs (2024) ‘Social and Political Comment in Animation’ [Live Lecture].
PU002333: Design for Animation, Narrative Structures and Film Language. University of the Arts London, London College of Communication. 24 October.
Unfortunately due to an electrical fault in Stockport I wasn’t able to get to this lecture in person, so I followed the recorded lecture at home.
Anticipation: The action that immediately precedes the expected action; the mechanical buildup for force. Anticipation is the most natural way to build up internal force in order to execute dynamic motion. “Any animation consists of Anticipation, Action, and Reaction.” (Bill Tytla)
An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force – this law applies to everything in the universe, including us. It’s precisely because of this law that anticipating left before walking right results in a conservation of energy.
Anticipation is the key to describing how much strength and force go into a movement, while squash and stretch ‘sell’ the action as realistic and believable.
(George Toombes (2024) ‘Friday Session 11/10/24: Critiquing Pendulum animations. Differentiating weights using spacing via Pendulum. Planning/animating Ball with Tail.’ [Recorded Lecture]. PU002332: 3D Computer Animation Fundamentals. University of the Arts London, London College of Communication. 11 October.)
For now, this assignment will be blocking only – fluidity of movement and spline will be added at a later stage. Settings: 100 Frames, 24fps, side view only. We are advised to push too far at first and then pull our animation back rather than starting with small movements and continuously adding to them bit by bit, this is often what makes animation more dynamic and interesting than real life.
Keep it Simple, Stupid.
In order to ‘block’ in the poses for this assignment, we had to set the Default in Tangent space to Linear, and the Default out Tangent to Stepped in the animation tab of the preferences window. This stops Maya from interpolating the in-between stages of our set keyframes, so instead of making the object float gradually between location changes, it will jump suddenly.
I posed the rig this way as the default starting position based on the video references of squirrels shown in the lecture (I also changed the root of the rigged model because I I like foxes).
This is what the keyframes looked like when blocked out – this was an interesting way to work and to see how cartoonish motion, more loosely based on reality is set out before being fully fleshed out and perfected. I like this way of working.
My fox-ball jumping. It’s obviously clunky and jumpy due to the way the movement was set out in the timeline, but I like the way this moves, at least at this early stage.
In this class we had to learn first how to load a project from the Epic Games library, then use samples from the scene to learn some of the fundamental elements of animating a complex scene in Unreal Engine.
We were also shown the difference between Possessable and Spawnable active elements (typically rigged characters) within a scene. Possessable characters are described as non-playable character type additions, and remain visible when working on other elements within the scene. Spawnable characters are the active characters, hidden from view when not an active element within a scene or aspect of the sequence being worked on.
I am unfamiliar with Unreal Engine and find the software intimidating, so I focused primarily on making sense of how to use the sequencer and got to grips with some simple controls such as camera focal length, location, zoom and rotation. I also rendered a sequence which was meant to cut between three different active cameras to demonstrate that this was something I spent time learning to do. Unfortunately, the camera cut function wasn’t doing as I asked – I noticed it wasn’t generating keyframes in the video editing sequencer but had no idea how to proceed. This is something I will return to work on at LCC (my laptop does not have enough available storage space to run Unreal Engine while I work at home).
I was reassured to get the chance to stay behind after class and speak to Serra who told me in clear terms what is expected of me in the completion of this unit, and showed me some previous students’ work as a frame of reference to aspire to. Serra also made an excellent point about choosing something familiar to me in terms of development, and as a graduate of LCF I decided to start drafting ideas based on fashion media, I started considering things I would have liked to be able to make in my previous studies as an undergraduate.
This served as my introductory session to Friday’s lectures on animation fundamentals as I’d missed the first week of teaching. I was introduced to a set of core principles I want to make a note of here:
When working in Maya, always save as Maya Ascii format
Import rigged objects into Maya via the Reference Editor
Attach all files to project titled Animation Fundamentals, saved to Hard Drive or desktop
I was added to the Microsoft Teams group where resources are added, including tutorials to work through tests at own speed
We were reminded to buy or borrow a copy of the Animator’s Survival Kit, and to familiarise ourselves with the twelve principles of animation
Then onto the pendulum test:
We used the ultimate rigged pendulum found on Behance via the following link: https://www.behance.net/gallery/17774421/Ultimate-Rigs-for-Free
We were told to create Quick Select Sets for the Pendulum itself, then the joints separately for ease and speed of selection while animating. Quick Select Sets are added via the Create tab > Sets > Quick Select Sets > the set is named, then added to shelf.
First we keyed in the movement from left to right, but Maya automatically gradually slowed the pendulum down as it stopped, when what we wanted was an abrupt stop. To do this, we used the graph editor. Rather than manually editing the curve along the Z axis to straighten it out, we were advised to use the Linear Tangents feature shown here:
Next we rotated the joints in line with the pendulum’s movement along the Z axis to illustrate the sense of gravitational pull, being dragged behind:
After the abrupt stop at frame 40 comes the tricker part, the pendulum joints swing back with the force of the energy with which they were dragged up to this point. They have to be animated snapping back in a way that makes realistic sense in line with the speed at which the pendulum was moving – remembering also that the force will never match what it was before. The pendulum will never swing back higher than it did in the first instance.
At this point in the lesson I was starting to appreciate the fluidity of the pendulum joints’ movement and how they illustrate the sudden force with which the pendulum stops moving, and beginning to get more comfortable with the software and rig we were using.
By the end I was spotting something like a pattern in the graph editor:
But watching the playback I’d clearly rushed through some of the keyframes when they should have been spaced apart more to denote the slow fluidity of the joints as they gradually stopped swinging:
Even a relatively small adjustment in spacing made a difference:
This is how playback looked after cleaning up the keyframes and offsetting the bottom control/joint by 3 frames:
