Self Evaluation: "Slipping on a Puddle" Animation

I'm combining the second playblast with the self evaluation for the "Slipping on a Puddle" animation. This is because this animation is quite a bit shorter than the others and I don't want to risk repeating myself.

So this was my last planned animation. Unfortunately it had to be shorter due to time constraints but I'm hoping my longer animations make up for the content total for the hand-ins.

That being said, I enjoyed making this animation and am happy with the result.

I finished up the footwork and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. The last time I attempted complex footwork was the sword swinging animation from last semester. This one also required a lot of guess work as it is hard to act out. I was scrubbing the timeline a lot and looking for where the force was pushing the character and what movements I'd need to make to counter-balance but also allow the character to lose that balance and fall backwards.

Whereas my other evaluations cover aims such as: pacing, story/character and animation quality, I feel the characterisation was harder to convey in a shorter scene. However I did set-up a walk cycle trying to give a little taste to what this character might be like.

I wanted a character that obviously wasn't looking where they were going. I have done the drunk walk before so decided to go for an over-the-top jolly fellow striding along without a care in the world. He then encounters a slippery surface and all sorts of shenanigans ensue as he falls on his back.

Had I had more time I could've went crazy with this. I could've had greater arm flairs and more comedic actions. I could've prolonged the fall even longer or added a more exaggerated Looney Tunes-esque pause in mid-air before falling.

The animation quality isn't my best but I was still happy with how it turned out. Unfortunately time was not on my side due to other modules and lots of hand-ins so I had to cut my time short to work on this one.

This will be my last animation for semester. Thanks for reading!

Slipping on a Puddle

As my time has been limited and will only get more limited. I started a new animation which I will hopefully finish in time. It's a smaller scenario and a bit more light-hearted. It requires less physics and more silly exaggeration than I've done in a while.

The scenario is simply walking into a puddle/oil slick, having a moment trying to balance and then falling flat onto the ground.

I started the animation with another walk cycle. I went for extremely jolly with big strides, a terrifying smile and a care free attitude. I like how this walk cycle turned out. Usually I have to edit the pacing of these animations but I seem to have this one fine from the start.

I've not blocked out the later leg movement as I know the footwork is the big action requirement of the scene. I plan to do some wacky arm movements and over-the-top balancing before falling to the ground. I was initially inspired to do this animation after seeing a funny video a while back, still makes me laugh.

Self Evaluation: "Waking Up" Animation

This self evaluation is on my "waking up" animation which is the longest animated scenario I've created this semester and one of the most complex, despite its slower pace and less action packed narrative.

This self evaluation, like the others, will look at the following aims: pacing, story/character and animation quality.

The pacing in this animation was intentionally slow, but the actions contained in the scenario are played out at with appropriate timing. I've avoided a lot of the 'floatiness' in my older animations by again playing a lot with the graph editor.

When the character attempts to hit the snooze button his alarm clock, there are both good and bad points to make on the timing. I think the upper arm action is good but the wrist movement can feel a little "out of time" with the rest of the arm movement. The character is supposed to be tired so it makes less sense that the wrist would be moving independently "stronger" than it should've been.

The character in this scenario comes across quite strong, as does the narrative. It's something that almost everyone can relate with as we've all been in that situation (some of us daily).

I mentioned in an earlier post about the acting principle "A Scene is a Negotiation". I think considering this and thinking about this principle has really improved the storytelling in my animation. I also think having the longer length of time has allowed me to explore more actions and therefore improved the narrative and characterisation.

A lot of the actions are much more subtle in this scene: the yawn, the attempt to wake up, the drowsy head movements. The subtly has allowed for the scene to feel more natural and realistic,

The animation quality overall is good, very good in parts, average in others. Just like my "Sitting Up" animation, I've struggled to get the "pushing" force perfect. I have managed to animate a better attempt but I couldn't find the best pose to get the best "push" out of it. His arms were a little short compared to his body here so he only has a small push, even with the large bend in his body. The IK also snaps the elbow a little bit which is unintended but a lot less noticeable than in my animations from last semester.

Overall I'm very happy with this animation I'm most proud to show this one to others. I worry that its length will be looked badly upon in grading and that my next animation may not live up to this one. I do have only a couple of weeks left and I'm already struggling with time as it is, so I'll be starting on my next (and final) animation very soon.

Waking Up 3

This is the final playblast for this animation. I probably should've "playblast'd" the progress between this and the last one but got carried away with animating and forgot to.

This has been one of the longest animations I've made and one I've spent the most time on. Although I did say in my reflective brief that I was aiming for 5-10 second animations, this one tops almost 25 seconds. Although the animation is slower paced and not as intense, there's a lot of subtly in the animation. This will probably count towards 2 of my total animations this semester as its quite a lot.

I'll go through the animation chronologically and explain the differences.

Starting off with the alarm clock, the upper arm now drags the lower arm up above it. I've added more 'force' to the hit, it looks live gravity is properly effecting his arm and he's simply dropping it on the clock. I've added some floppy wrist action and the fingers are also animated now. He attempts to hit the clock in a number of different places.

Once the alarm clock goes off his arm just drops back instead of going back to where it was before. I think its a great addition that just emphasises the tiredness, laziness or care free nature of the character.

The arms and legs no longer clip through the bed as I've changed their animation controllers to Inverse Kinematics (IK), which means that they remain stationary regardless of where the body is rotating. The arms still remain Forward Kinematics (FK) until the hands make contact with the bed just as he's about to push himself up.

As he pushes himself up his arms droop to his sides with his hands just trailing along the bed. He leans forward and his head just hangs forward drowsily until he decides to put his feet on the ground.

His head continues to bobble around as his body leads the way. The character has a moment to compose himself but instead falls back to the bed.

The impact comprises of his arms succumbing to gravity and his body also falls back to the bed with his head bumping around the pillow.

I have more to say about this animation but I shall do so in the following self evaluation.

Waking Up 2

In this playblast, I've been slowly polishing up all of the basic blocking in this scenario.

I've added some more rotation in his head so that he's almost always moving ever so gradually on the pillow. I think this adds a great drowsy feeling to his actions. As he reaches out for the alarm I've added a little bit of body motion as he stretches out. The action of hitting the alarm has been tweaked, I've added some wrist and elbow motion to get that floppy arm, half-effort attempt to hit the snooze button. I still need to tweak the curves to get more of an impact on each hit.

The eyes now open as he looks up for the first time and close as he falls back into bed. I've added in a lot of back bend in both attempts when he tries to sit up. Note that the arms do clip through the bed, I haven't worked on that yet.

The rest of the animation is still un-worked on, slowly getting there but I'm enjoying this one.

Waking Up 1

I've started working on my next animation: someone trying to wake up in the morning. The scenario just came to me and I felt like animating it so I just did. I started blocking out the actions which I made up as I went along, there was no planning for future actions.

I built a basic bed and put my favourite rig into the scene (I've been using this one a lot, it controls very well). I wanted to make the starting pose the best I could, rather than just the default which I often forget to pose. Just subtle changes like the feet not being symmetrical, the shoulders rested back, his body tilting ever so slightly.

The scenario starts out in the bed, and the alarm clock goes off so the character attempts to hit the snooze or off button. It takes a few tries but he apparently gets it and returns back to rest. He pauses a small moment before making a small attempt to look up and observe his surroundings.

I've blocked out the rest of the scene just basically, he does decide to wake up and sits up, slowly turns to the side, but eventually collapses back into bed. I decided to have this extra action at the end just to round things off. I feel it would be a bit boring to end with the sitting up. Humour after all is worth the extra effort.

I've been reading Ed Hooks' Acting for Animators and one of the seven acting principles he writes about is "A Scene is a Negotiation". Similar to Robert McKee's "Story", they both describe the three types of conflict: inner, personal and extra-personal. In my scenario the whole scene is a negotiation, the negotiation with his inner thoughts and body to get out of bed. Because of this, I wanted to show the process behind his own thoughts. The small attempts to wake up, the yawn, the hitting the alarm. They're all conflicts which he has to overcome to wake up, meanwhile battling his own desire to sleep a little bit more. This is something I haven't really considered in this much detail but after reading the book, it makes sense, and thinking in this sense has been educational.

Self Evaluation: "Robot and the Button" Animation

This self evaluation reflects on my latest animation "Robot and the Button" which is a small animated scenario about a robot finding a button.

In this blog post I'll cover the following aims: pacing, story/character and animation quality. I also look at how the research I've done has informed my practice.

The pacing was originally too slow unlike my last animation. I sped it up so that the character's tempo matched its character. I feel like I've given this animation enough time for each action, no action is particularly rushed and its easy to interpret the story. That being said, the reaction 'double-take' to seeing the button could've been extended and there could've been extra reactions I could've put there if I wished to enhance the character or create more mystery. I chose not to purely because I felt the scene was complex enough and that I'd like to move on and animate something different.

The character I wanted to convey was a child-like, innocent robot with a bouncy and curious personality. From working with this character in 'Professional Project' I was reminded of Wall-E who has a similar box-like structure with big eyes and a curious nature. Unlike Wall-E, this character's eyes are static. While this was intended and I am happy with the amount of character I got from this model, I would like to try animating a more complex character which does have pose-able eyes.

I feel the actions I made the character take were appropriate for his character. He is quite observing of his surroundings and wants to investigate things. I've been reading Ed Hooks' Acting for Animators and one of his seven essential acting principles is about "Acting is Doing, Acting is also Reacting". He describes how not all characters would react the same to an action but all characters would react. Seeing the character's reactions on screen tells us about the character and we read the story and environment through the character.

Animation quality was again okay, still an improvement over my previous animations but not quite there yet. Not much I can do but keep animating and get a little better each time. This animation required me to think over all the little details: the footing, the head movements, the pauses and reactions. The walk cycles aren't as 'floaty' as some of my older animations and its evident my use of the graph editor has helped to tackle some issues. I think I could've tweaked curves further, particularly in the way the character moves across the screen. The walk cycle looks all right but the translation along the screen is quite uniform, but I guess he is a robot after all.

Overall I'm quite happy with this animation, I enjoyed making it and felt more like a little scenario than some of my other work. It did take longer to make but at 12 seconds this does exceed the time frame I was aiming for.

Robot Character Animation 4

This week a guest lecturer, John Harrison, was covering for Ryan Locke. He gave some feedback which I found valuable. He suggested there should be more weight and impact on down steps to add bulk to the character. The robot may be small but he is made of metal and would be reasonably heavy. I was also given the suggestion to exaggerate the double take and hold pause longer.

John also mentioned the footwork where the character turns to face the button before walking towards it. There is something not quite right about it and if you look at the previous playblast you'll see how the inner foot has to spin on the spot as the outer foot takes the step around.

With this latest playblast I've attempted to correct this along with the other feedback. I've now made the inner foot lead on the turn which makes more sense as it was the outer foot that made the last step. Doing this has changed the way the body rotates and this has actually improved the way he turns. It looks a lot more natural now even if it took a long time to correct.

I used the graph editor to move the timeline of the steps forward (but pulling the translation back to match), re-keyed the animation at the beginning and at the end of the cycle, while also moving the arm swings and body rotations to match the new walk.

I've also added more weight to the down step. Again I used the graph editor to achieve this. It's not quite perfect yet but its definitely an improvement.

I also made the head turn double take more noticeable by increasing the time he pauses on looking at the button, as well as increasing the rotation in both directions, both looking at the button and looking forward as he registers what he saw.

I've also added in another action/re-action when the robot character walks up to the button. I added in a head turn of curiosity, I was inspired by how Pixar's Wall-E character reacts to new things he finds. 

And finally I finished up animating his reaction to the wall falling over, its a simple jump of shock but I think it works effectively.

I'm considering this animation to be complete for now, I will evaluate this fully in a future blog post.

Robot Character Animation 3

This playblast shows the next iteration of this animation. I've slightly tweaked the curves on the initial walk cycle mainly on the arms. It adds a little more "gravity" to the scene which is unnoticeable small but I do think it is an improvement.

I've also altered the pause where the robot sees the button. He begins to take his next step but doesn't make it and his leg pauses in air for a while. I'm still tweaking on this as its not quite right, especially when returning to the ground.

I've now completed the walk cycle all the way up to the button including all the arm and feet movement. This walk approaching is slightly slower paced and he doesn't swing his arms as high. The character's head also remains fixed to looking at the button. His body rotates slightly towards the button as he gets closer.

I've thought up the end of the scenario and decided it would be funny if the character ended up messing something up. In this case, the button doesn't do anything specifically but the consequence of putting force on the button causes the thin wall to shake out of place and quickly fall over. I've began blocking out the jump reaction the character has. Again, I was looking at Wall-E for the way he often reacts to things.

Robot Character Animation 2

I increased the tempo of the robot's walk cycle and it already looks better. That, along with the swinging arms and bouncy antenna gives a great "care free" personality to the robot.

As the robot approaches the button I've made him pause but his leg and body continue to move for a while. I wanted that comedic 'leg in the air' pause as he sees the button for the first time.

The tempo increase enhances both the first walk as well as the second walk up to the button. I added some body bend as he approaches to suggest curiosity.

I did a bit more work on the feet as well. In the previous playblast the feet are flat throughout. Here, I have given them a rotation and "snap" back into place as they impact the ground. It's a small change but it takes time and it's always worth it.

Robot Character Animation 1

As part of my 'Professional Project' module I have been creating animation rigs for our game and animating them. As I have animated with the rig I've imagined how that character would move out-with the game's environment. The character model for this rig was designed by fellow classmate Ryan Shearer. I wanted to use this rig in an animation created for this semester.

The walk cycle in-game is quite military and has an obvious focus on getting that character to the other side of the battlefield to fight. As part of 'Creative Research' I explored different variations of a walk cycle that was more light-hearted and bouncy to match the character's profile.

These are three walk cycles which I did for 'Creative Research' on which I based my next animation for this module on. Each walk cycle has a different character to it, this has been attributed to how much movement went into the body and the tempo of the character's walk.

I liked the bubbly bouncy character style that swung his arms and bobbed his head as he went. I designed a scenario in which he encountered a strange button and his curiosity gets the better of him.

At the moment I only have the basic movement blocked out, just the walking right now. The pace is a bit slow so I shall speed this up next iteration.

Still have to add arm movements and have him actually press the button.

I'd like to add more of a reaction shot to him seeing the button and then cautiously or curiously approach the button. I'm not exactly sure what should happen once he presses the button. I'll see what I can think up.

Self Evaluation: "Standing Up" Animation

This is a self evaluation post on my "Standing up from a chair" animation which I have set as "completed" however I may still have a chance to work on it later.

This evaluation will cover the following aims: pacing, story/character and animation quality.

From the first and second playblasts, I did slow down the pacing of the animation but I feel I could've went further on this. For example when he sees his friend he jumps straight into a wave. It would've been nice to have seen some additional action here such as squinting his eyes or taking a moment to register if that was his friend or not. I definitely attempted to go for a slower more realistic/natural scene rather than my usual slapstick scenarios. I do think there's some subtlety in there but could have paused longer on actions or exaggerated them to come through more strongly.

The narrative was decent I think, not great but not bad either. It is definitely an improvement over a similar animation I made last year. Whereas that animation was a simple wave, there was no story to it and therefore no character could really be shown. With this animation I wanted to put that character in a place and time and therefore I put more consideration into what he was thinking and what he was reacting to.
I could've expanded on the moment at the start, perhaps increased agitation or fidgeting if he was nervous or perhaps taking a more active interest around the place he was sitting. If he was more relaxed then perhaps I could've gave him a more laid-back pose.
I tried to avoid any moment where the character was still, he's always moving ever so slightly in every frame. I did not finish off the animation so well, I tried to anticipate any future actions he may take but his rest posture and future actions could've been set-up better.

This is the first animation where I've used the graph editor in more depth (other than some basic tests) and while there are no quick accelerations or demonstrations of impact forces, I did use the graph editor to my advantage in places such as the instant he sits up which I made have a steep curve to get that slow start up into a quick sit-up.
I feel this animation isn't as "floaty" as my previous animations but it isn't perfect either. The sitting up part suffers from a few issues which I tried my best to solve. One issue is that I don't feel like he is properly "pushing" against his knees to assist him in sitting up. I think this issue is related to the pose he is in. Either I need to have his body further forward or have his hands located elsewhere.
I tried out the action in real life a good few times and while it helped me to solve a few issues it still wasn't perfect. The rig itself does have quite long arms and the shoulder movements can be limiting sometimes.
The arms themselves feel like they're just attached to the knees rather than pushing against it. This is because I used IK controllers which dictate where the elbow joint bends based on the position of the hands and the shoulders. However if I were to use FK controllers then I'd have more control over the elbows (and therefore control over the "push") but would instead have the hands constantly clip through the legs as his body moved. I picked the lesser of two evils and went for the IKs so I could have the hands firmly on the legs. This is something I imagine a lot of animators have a problem with and I will attempt to research on how to get around this.

Overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It's not as entertaining to watch as some of my previous animations but there's definitely an attempt to give more subtlety to the character which I was proud of. With creating one animation after the other, it will allow me to take my own advice and apply it to my next animation.

Playblasts

As I wanted to be able to evaluate and compare my work as I went along as well as show my progress to others for feedback, I have been rendering out my animations as playblasts as I make changes. I've chosen to make around 3-5 playblasts for each animation depending on the changes I make and the complexity of the changes.

I've continued to work on the "Standing up from a Chair" animation (not very creative name, I know) and have slowed down the pace of the scene to allow the character to react to seeing his friend.

Since the first playblast, I have raised the head back a bit more and given the character a smile (and jaw open) as if mouthing "hey" to his friend he has just spotted across the room. I've also made him keep eye contact for a little bit longer and kept the moment before he turns his head back in anticipating for sitting up.

As for the standing up part, I've altered the posture he rests at and smoothed out the rotation and translation in his hip joint for a smoother rise and rest.

I would normally give a playblast its own post but I thought I'd try including two here since they the changes were made within a short time of each other and I'd like to compare them as well.

The third and last (for the time being) playblast adds in the remaining motion on the arms. The character now rests his hands on his knees and pushes against them to stand up. At the moment his hands touch his knees I changed the arms to IKs so that they remain on the knees until I lift them off again (where they go back to FK controllers).

At the start of the scene, I added in a waiting "idle" pose for the character. His knees move together and back again, he also taps his fingers on the side of his leg. I also put some small head movements in as if he is listening to his own thoughts. I wanted the idle state to be as if he was just waiting in a train station for someone.

He slowly glances to the left, then continues quicker to the left once he spots someone off-screen. To accompany the smile and head movement I added in the last playblast, I also add in a small friendly wave to acknowledge his friend. The feet move back in anticipation and the character stands up, returning his sight to his friend in anticipation that they'd be walking over and can greet.

As per my reflective brief, I will evaluate this final animation in a following blog post identifying parts I believe were done well, and parts I can improve upon. While this animation could still be worked on, I will start on another animation as per my plan for this semester. There is nothing stopping me from coming back to this though.

Evaluating Last Semester's Work

As discussed, as I wanted to have a more evaluative approach to my work, I will be taking a look at my previous work.

To evaluate an animation I decided to make a video report where I highlight parts of my animations where there is room for improvement.

To summarise the video I make these key points:

• 'Impacts' need to be stronger - i.e. footsteps
• Work on timing - it affects the forces, weight, narrative and believability
• Reduce 'floatiness' of animations - combat with timing, graph editor, and poses

Brushing up on the Basics

In response to my evaluation of last year's work and as stated in my reflective brief, I want to address some issues that I had in my animations.

The 'floaty' feeling of some of the actions in my previous animations just don't seem right. For example an arm moving through space may not feel like its falling in the arc it should or seem to be defying gravity a little. This is most evident in the Sword Swinging animation.

This semester I want to use the Graph Editor in more depth than I have been doing. It allows greater control of the 'tweening' between keyframes, it can be used to achieve the slow-starts, follow throughs and and accelerations I've been wanting to achieve but did not. The same keyframes can be used, but with the graph editor an animation can be greatly improved as you tweak the curves.

In the 'Creative Research' module I have completed a few exercises in order to better understand the graph editor. The following videos are from that module but I have analysed them here in relation to how this will help with my project for this module this semester.

Pendulum Swing

The first video shows the default unedited curves in the graph editor. The second video shows that by manipulating the curves changes the speed and acceleration of the motion of the object between those two keyframes.

It was in this exercise I discovered the "Weighted Tangents" mode that allows you to scale the size of the curve at a keyframe. Throughout last semester I was unaware this feature existed and was using extra keyframes to attempt to get the motion I wanted. Less keyframes means better control over the animation and therefore better quality animation.

Bouncing Ball

The second task I did was a simple ball bounce. Although I'd used the graph editor before to break tangents to create the realistic 'bounce', I was much more comfortable with achieving the motion I wanted. 

Head Turn

Although not a typical animation exercise, I also tried a head turning. Not only does the head turn but it rises in anticipation as he turns, I also added secondary action such as the blink.

Although simple, these exercises definitely improved my confidence in being able to use the graph editor. In addition, I also took more care into only keyframing what I needed to keyframe, for example only keying the rotation of the axis is moving and using the graph editor's curves to get something moving the way I wanted it to.

Let's Animate

For the first animation I want to make, I chose to animate a character standing up from a chair and reacting to an off-screen character.

I chose this as a further progression from the animation I did last semester where the character flips a table. The action of standing up from the chair here was not bad but I didn't think too much of it as my attention was focused on other actions in the animation.

Part of what my animations lacked in first semester was a sense they were a character living in that moment. As part of my reading into "Acting for Animators" by Ed Hooks, he says "Your character should play an action until something happens to make him play a different action."

I have began to block out the basic keyframes for this animation. Its only a short scene to begin with but I want to focus more on the subtly of the character's reactions to the scene he is in.
In this scene the main character is sitting in his chair, he is not pre-occupied with anything else so I feel any movement he does make should be in his head (as he only as his thoughts to keep him occupied at the moment) and his hands (fidgeting as he waits).

So far I only have the basics blocked out, its still a little fast so I'll correct the pacing next. I also need to finish off the arm movements.

Reflective Brief

For the learning contract I further clarified what I want to do for my project. I've copied over some of the information from the brief.


3D Animation Self-Improvement and Exploration
Continuing focus on 3D animation from last semester with the aim of self-improvement from evaluating past and ongoing work.

Design, experiment and evaluate animations throughout the semester for the purpose of self-improvement and exploration of style.

Personal Reflective Objective
Last semester I made a decent attempt at the animation coursework but there were notable problems including timing issues and not getting a sense of weight from the characters. As all 5 animations were worked on simultaneously and handed in at one time, I feel it would be more beneficial to work on one animation after the other to give myself time to reflect and evaluate on each animation before moving on. This also opens up the possibility to re-iterate and correct mistakes that are able to be fixed as I learn. Posting to Behance and my blog will allow me to get any feedback for things I miss as well as suggestions to improve.

Practical Reflective Objective
Improving as an animator is still my aim and I am aware there is a lot of room for improvement. I still want to focus on this rather than other fields. The best way to improve would be to continue with working on and completing animations. Without focusing too much on pre-production, I want to focus purely on the animated character, however should put some extra thought into their motives and feelings in order to achieve a more engaging outcome. I will work in short sprints and create animations “on the whim” to whatever action I feel like trying out. I will give myself about two weeks to complete an animation then I will evaluate the process, what I did right and what I could have done better.

Learning Objectives

1. Understanding the 3D animation pipeline
2. Utilising advanced technical features such as the graph editor
3. Appropriately using the principles of animation to develop and explore an animation style 
4. Applying acting techniques to improve performance in animation

Deliverables

1. Project Development Blog
• Will contain evidence of the practical processes, thoughts, storyboards and research undertaken which reinforce the project. The blog should contain a reflective log for approximately each week.
2. Behance WIP Posts
• I will have Work In Progress Posts on my Behance profile which will show updates of my work on a weekly basis as well as any feedback my peers have left and the responses I have had to this feedback.
3. Behance Portfolio
• My Behance.net profile will have a ‘CAP Semester 2’ Project which contains the final animations for the project.
4. Project Deliverables
• There should be a minimum of 5 animations in total. Each animation should be of around 5-10 seconds.

Project Idea

After speaking with Ryan (lecturer) I discussed a few ideas for my project this semester. I still want to focus on improving my animation skills. To do that, I should stick with animation and just keep working on stuff to hopefully get better at it.

An idea for a project came up which mainly focused on self improvement. Instead of working on 5 animations simultaneously and handing them in at the end, I would instead work on a series of animations one after the other evaluating and reflecting as I go. This will allow me progressively improve when identifying problems.

So I will animate in "sprints" perhaps spending a week or two on an animation, then review it in a video evaluation and highlight weaknesses I can work on and hope to tackle them on a future animation.

I want to also focus more on the animation than the planning of it. Although storyboards are useful in some cases, I feel more comfortable with animating "on the whim" where often I can make more appealing and humorous animations, this approach usually only works on small animations which suits me fine for this project.

Next steps here would be to write this up in more details for the learning contract, to evaluate work from last semester to identify problems to tackle and to begin to animate whatever comes to my head.

Semester 2 - Ideas and Proposal

Off the top of my head: I want to continue working in 3D animation, probably creating a series of animations (maybe include motion-capture, maybe focus on humour/style or something else).

Statement of Intent

Continue focusing on 3D animation to improve my skills and to create a series of animations (brief to be determined) that explores this.

Previous Semester

Last semester I focused a lot of 3D animation, it was my first attempt at animating in a 3D package. It required me to transfer my previous 2D and stop-motion animation skills into 3D as well as learn the ropes of the way 3D works. There's a lot more technical things to get a grip on like the graph editor and interface.

Reflective Evaluation

For this module I think I'd like to continue focusing on 3D animation. I think my strength lies in when I have a strong idea of my own (often humorous) that I see to the end.

I think my weaknesses lie mainly in the timing of the movement in the characters. I think the poses are suitable but could be more quick paced in moving to those poses and more emphasis of anticipation and follow through.

Proposed Project

The sort of project ideas I currently have in mind are mainly creating a series of animations. Similar to last semester they'd be short 5-10 seconds. I'd choose a focus such as creating these animations for a character in a game, or perhaps a few scenarios with a stylized animation technique such as squash and stretch. I may want to experiment with motion capture to create more realistic animations.