Category: 4.1 project 1

A 3D computer animation course is supposed to be about learning animation; in fact, I think this course is the most interesting thing I’ve learned, animating is much more fun than making models, rigging, and drawing texture, but it also requires thinking about more things, and maybe learning physics if necessary?

I haven’t studied animation in any particular detail systematically, which has led to my animations being very stiff all the time, and I’m not a big fan of exaggerated expressions myself, so it’s hard for me to come up with flexible dynamics, which I think is my weakness and quite fatal.
I have learned a lot of the basics of animation production in this course, which is very useful, and my level of character animation is gradually improving. Unfortunately, I have limited energy this semester, and I would like to do both assignments perfectly if I could。

I enjoy whether it’s just animating the movement or the expressions, and it gives me a great sense of achievement when a model comes to life.
But these results are only possible with the teacher’s feedback. I can’t rely on my teacher to check my work all the time. I still need to improve my animation skills. After all, without my teacher checking my work, my animations would still be stiff.

There’s little that can be amended this week.
I still have some dynamic movements that aren’t curved trajectories, but it’s not a big problem, and my teacher wants me to be a little more precise with my mouth shape and then pay attention to the head delays.

I exaggerated the movements a bit according to my understanding, changed some more dynamics and angles, and made the final result:

Although this animation exercise was only three seconds long, I gained much important knowledge about making animations, which I found very useful.

This week, I got only a few feedback because the teacher could not explain the questions to me face-to-face.
To summarise the teacher’s requirements:

1. The hand movements are still not harmonious and need to be adjusted
2. The body movements do not feel like its drag the head, there needs to be a feeling that the body moves first, and then the head moves

This is the effect after I changed it:

The feedback I got from my teacher this week was constructive!
I think this rule can also be used in future animations

My teacher told me about the curve principle because human activity is always shown as a curve, so if you look at it on a flat surface, the character panning activity will look unnatural.

My teacher gave me a few demonstrations using the nose tip as a marker point and asked me to change it.

There was also a very annoying mistake; I turned on IK to create the arms animation, so now the hand movements would freeze sometimes.
Finally, the teacher asked me to move the hand placement to the left so that the main body area would be more exposed.

The curve principle is instrumental, and although I can’t notice the problem all the time, I will try to troubleshoot these problems.

Here’s how it looks after I’ve modified it

This week I produced my first animation exercise.
As requested by my teacher, I created the characters’ body movements and then tried to add some mouth shapes.
Even very flexible models have some difficulty creating expressions; blocking was an excellent way to see this.
I am very happy with the first pointing movement of the character, which looks very smug.

I am looking forward to the feedback from my teacher text week.

Acting

After checking with my teacher, I thought my reference needed to be improved dynamically, and there were too many movements pointing.
I indicated that I might need to focus more on my mermaid project, which my teacher understood and allowed me only need to make 3 seconds of animation.

At the teacher’s request, I needed to annotate the phrase:

And I found a model I liked for this animation, Zelda from Tears of the Kingdom. This flexible model was made by a YouTuber as a tutorial.

Only a few changes were needed this week. What I found interesting was that a few details were changed to make the character’s behavior more vivid and to gradually show that this is a timid, naughty, and very mobile child.

To summarise what needs to be changed:

1. The movement of the hips is still unnatural and needs to be changed
2. Modify the problem of sliding feet
3. Some movements are not exaggerated enough

My shortcoming may be that it is difficult to exaggerate some of the movements. I subconsciously think that real humans do not make such movements, so it’s hard to make the animation achieve good results.

This is the result

This week my teacher gave me feedback, and it turned out that many things could have been improved with each revision. Although they were all small and minor details, my animation became more vivid because of these details.
To summarise what my teacher needed me to change this time:

1. The movement of the character needs to be more significant. It is still very stiff and needs to be revised.
2. When the character raises one foot, the hips must be slightly lowered.
3. Keep your head looking in the same direction
4. when the character moves. Other parts have some delay and drag.
5. Add some necessary intermediate frame movements

This is a note from my teacher

This is the effect of the change：

And according to the teacher’s request, we drew a draft of the following assignment and filmed the reference using ourselves as models. This time, the assignment was to make an animation based on lines 3-8 seconds long.
I felt so shy …..
So before you can be a good animator, you must be a good actor？
But I have to say this method can create accuracy and can significantly improve the animation’s accuracy.
Although Im really shy about acting this.

This week I revised my animation and checked it with my teacher, who was very generous and patient in giving me lots of advice.

To summarise what the teacher has asked to be changed:

1. The body and head will be delayed to varying degrees when the character moves
2. The character’s waist and hips move in a figure-8 trajectory
3. Removal of the hand propping on the floor
4. Lift the body before the head when the character bends down and gets up
5. Baseball bats should fly faster
6. In a scared pose, the character’s upper body should sway with the shaking.
7. Characters should run away faster

Here’s the effect after the change.
Blocking is an exciting way to make basic animation. I rarely animate this way, which may also be why my animation could not be more varied.
Blocking helps me to see more visually if each movement is appropriate so that my teacher can give me more straightforward feedback.

I submitted the assignment last week and got 38 corrections from my teacher …..
I was shocked to see this number…
But each suggestion was pertinent, making the movement more exciting and smooth to follow.
My summary of my teacher’s suggestions is these:

Note the delayed movement of the character in different body positions on each action.
Some movements are not entirely natural, mark them and change it
Remove frames where some body parts move individually
Bugs in the middle movements, e.g., hands coming off the bat
The escape move was not added. The teacher gave some hints on how to do it, so follow the teacher’s instructions

Based on the teacher’s comments, here is the result after the change. I have added a simple background to the character and will gradually improve the details of this background later on：