MYSTERY BOX - MAYA SESSION #3

In this session, I carried on with my Mystery Box animation.

Before we started on our own animations, we did a small exercise involving Max. We were given a file of Max sitting at a desk with a computer. He was set in a default sitting position, and our task was to show two different expressions with Max, using his body language and facial features. He had to be looking at something on the computer, and then react horrified to what he saw.

After we had our poses, we splined the two to create a short smooth animation.

After this exercise, it was essentially business as usual. After getting some feedback from Jon, I was advised to redo my walk cycle, just because it was looking a little bit weird with things clipping and, when splining comes in, sliding. So I did just that! At the end of this session, I managed to get all my major blocking done. Ignoring the walk cycle that's going to be fixed up, Max now:

• Sees the box
• Turns to look at it
• Checks his watch
• Looks back
• Ends up next to the box
• Crouches down
• Looks inside
• Stands back up in shock
• Points to the box
• Hands in the air
• Starts leaving

So my next step is... steps, essentially. Make Max actually walk over to the box, and fix up the walk cycle that I've got going on at the moment. Feeling like good progress made this session!

MYSTERY BOX - MAYA SESSION #2

This post is on our continuation of our CG Mystery Box animation!

For this session, I managed to get an actual proper start on my animation, where we were given a little more free reign of what we did in the session. But beforehand, we were given probably the most important piece of advice we could get for this project; how to animate in stepped.

Stepped animation is different from the final product due to it's rigidness and stiffness. Stepped doesn't spline or guess the movement between two keyframes, it just IS those keyframes. The movements snap from one pose to the next. 

Working in stepped is similar to how I animate in 2D, working out the key poses first, seeing how it looks, then going back and filling in the gaps.

With that helpful advice, I started to animate my sequence. I got my camera all set up, so that it would match the same framing setup as my animatic. Then I started to work on the first part of my animation, which is the walk past the box. I switched to a side view so that I could have a locked camera to Max's side, and I could work on it essentially the same way I would a 2D walk cycle.

Not much to say for this session apart from that, just gotta keep working on the animation.

MYSTERY BOX - MAYA SESSION #1

Today we started actually animating our Mystery Box project.

Before the animation started, we had to choose which discipline we wanted to use for it; CGI or Stop Motion. I chose CGI, mostly because it was the only one of the main 3 disciplines where I didn't know how to animate characters, and wanted to get as broad experience with character animation as possible.

Speaking of which, the character rig we're using is from the website 11 Second Club, a site where animators are challenged every month to create animations around a certain idea. Aside from that, they also provide character rigs, one of which being called Max. Max is a simple human rig, resembling the wooden figures used to work on posing.

(A screenshot from MAX-verse expedition, an animation created as a part of one of the 11 Second Club's monthly competitions - credit: Paul Jun-Ho Chang)

Max has lots of controls for every joint in his body, from big joints like the hips and shoulders all the way down to individual finger controls. These can all be edited using Maya's rotate tool (or in some cases, like the shoulders, can also use the normal directional controls). Modification of one part can also influence other body parts to move too; for example, rotating the hips also rotates everything above the hips, instead of just the one joint.

Using Max, we used this session to mostly play around with the rig and get to grips with it. We had a light brief of making Max perform poses. Our first prompt was "waiting for the bus", followed by the emotions happy and sad, and we also got the chance to put our own pose in as well.

I found this pretty easy, and actually fun to do! It was a lot easier to make the character pull poses than I thought it'd be, and having accessible ways to make the character move around with the different handles was definitely a factor into making it a much more pleasant experience than it could've been.

(Waiting for the Bus)

(Happy)

(Sad)

("You Know I Had To Do It To 'Em" with reference)

To finish off the session, we very briefly started looking into how to make a walk cycle. We were recommended to use a different camera angle for it, specifically one that's fixed. Maya has two preset angles perfect for this; left and right cameras. They let you see from the chosen angles, without the ability to scrub across the Z axis, leaving you with essentially a 2D plain.

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Overall, I enjoyed this first session of Mystery Box animation! It was a lot easier and much more interesting to figure out how character rigs work than I initially thought! I don't know exactly what I was expecting, since the only time I've seen CG character animation behind the scenes was from old Toy Story featurettes, but given they're from 1995 and it's been nearly 25 years since then, the techniques are probably easier than back then. Looking forward to more!

MYSTERY BOX - BRIEFING

Today we were properly introduced to our Mystery Box brief. 

The project involves us making a short animation with a predefined CG rig or stop motion armature. We're to consider applying the animation principles to when the character walks onscreen, looks inside of a box, and their reaction. The box cannot be moved or touched, and the audience can't see what's inside it; only the character. It should last between 10 and 15 seconds, and be one fixed shot. We should also consider what's actually in the box, and how the character reacts.

Along with the usual deliverables, we're handing in:

• A storyboard, detailing the sequence
• An animatic
• The Mystery Box sequence itself

Exaggerated physical performance is a vital part of this task. The animation won't have any audio, all the information about the character's emotions & thoughts has to be entirely done through body language. We looked at classic silent performers and how they show a range of performances using only body language.

(Charlie Chaplin in "The Lion's Cage", a film that involves Chaplin only using physical movements and signals to communicate - credit: Charlie Chaplin)

We were given the choice between CGI and Stop Motion for this project. I chose CGI, for various reasons I discuss in both my Maya and Stop Motion workshop blog posts. We would be working in Maya again, and the animation would be a three step process:

1. BLOCKING  - Key poses, held to allow clarity for review
2. ANIMATION - Converting stepped keyframes to spline, and adjust to make a more appealing performance
3. POLISH - Refining movements and adding detailed keyframes

We saw an example of these steps at play with shot progression reels, specifically from Frozen and Kung-Fu Panda 3.

And that was the end of a surprisingly short briefing! I'm really interested to see how this project will go, considering it's the first real CGI animation I'm going to be doing! I have to storyboard some idea for what I could do for this animation, and at the minute I'm not entirely sure what that could involve. I'm sure I'll have something by the time the next session rolls around! There's a performance workshop on Wednesday, where I can start working on more realised ideas!