Amie McGovern's Portfolio
Anim Dojo Work Outs
Posing Exercise
To help practice my animation kills I singed up to AnimDojo an animation online school taught by professionals from the industry. Here are some notes from the first few classes all about setting up Maya, checklists and warm ups. I found it insightful to see different workflows and learn about short warm ups I can do to help me improve. I have also included some poses I created within a short time frame of around 10 minutes.
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Contrast Exercise
Below are my notes and workout animation for this exercise. For the work out exercise we were given a basic jump animation Maya file and told to push the poses and experiment with it. Below I have attached the file I was given along side the animation I improved. Overall I enjoyed pushing my poses and using a bit of squash and stretch to create a cartoon like effect. I feelI struggled the most animating the arms of the character with out reference.
To develop this animation I could add more of an environment to add content such as the character could be jumping over buildings or a car.
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Animation File Given
This was the animation file given to me by Animation Dojo with none of my changes.
My Animation
This is the animation with my improvements.
Functional Breakdown Exercise
Through this series of learning videos I learned more on brake down poses. despite learning about this before I found it helpful to go over and refresh my memory I also found it interesting to see another animators take on it. In school my teacher said he does not worry about the facial expressions and small detail for the brake down , whereas the animator hosting this set of videos, said it was important to do the facial poses as the face is connected to the body.
This made me realise there are lots of working methods and every animator has their own way of doing things.
I like the idea of adding in the facial expressions in the block out stage as I feel it helps to add more character and personality to the original block out helping me get a feel for the animation early on.
I found a handy tip said during this tutorial was begin your block out stage in stepped however when testing out play it through splime and if it plays flowingly you have most likely blocked it out right.
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Industry Tip Video - Will Cook
- "Do it once, do it right".
-Use this time to experiment + explore.
-Add contrast. Think about line of action.
-Poses need to be as strong as key frames.
Breakdown Exercise
For this exercise I was given the file shown below titled "Animation File Given" I was told to add a middle in-between pose along side changing up the poses given a little to help give the animation more flow and energy.
Animation File Given
This was the animation file given to me by Animation Dojo with none of my changes.
My Animation
Anticipation Exercise
This is the animation with my improvements. Overall despite room for improvement, many I could have pushed the poses even more? I am happy with this outcome as I feel there is a stronger sense of energy created. Below is a picture of the in-between pose I added to begin with. I also made changes to all of the other poses and added some moving holds.
Through these videos I gained a better understanding of Anticipation and when to use it. I learned it's important to think about whilst animating and consider how little movements can help add depth to an animation , helping to show the viewer where to look, highlighting when something is about to happen. For the practice exercise I couldn't find the file provided so I made my own animation of a girls facial expression who has seen something shocking on her phone. I added an anticipation before she looks shocked to help make the viewer look at her changing facial expressions so they won't miss her shocked look. Overall I feel this animation could do with more work to make the characters movements more fluid however it was just a quick practice exercise and feel for its purpose it was successful in making me think more about the lead up to a pose.
Timing Exercise
Timing is something I struggle with the most so in my opinion this was the hardest exersise so far. I found the tutorials helpful as they they gave lots of useful techniques such as using the 4 frame rule however this is something it need to practice as I found it a little confusing.below are some of the notes I made through the tutorial along side the timing exercise.
For the timing practice I was given a file of these legs jumping and told to add believable timing, spacing and change the poses. Overall I feel it would have been easier to start fresh as I found it messy and confusing correcting keyframes witch were already there however this was good practice for learning how to clean up my own work and got me thinking more about my use of timing and spacing.