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.