In this week’s project, we did a presentation where we had to explain the whole idea of the project2 and show the progress so far, and this is what I am going to do:
In this project, I plan to show some interesting creatures and landscapes through the interaction of the characters with some reality-based knowledge.
In this animation, I wanted to show deep-sea species through the construction of the environment, and if possible, I will add environmental conservation.
Previsualization/animatics/work-in-progress:
Set design and construction, character design and production.
This is a scene animation. The animation will focus on the environment and how the character’s activities are affected in such an environment.
Research & Inspiration
I like the theme of non-human species. My favorite is the mermaids of the deep sea. I wanted to share some interesting knowledge with audience, and I wanted my animation to be based on realistic information and knowledge, to convey some interesting biological perceptions, and to make the animation a certain educational nature.
As this is based on the development of a project I did a long time ago, I will still refer to this drawing style.
In the course of my research, I have learned that there are many things unknown to man in the depths of the ocean, so I am very interested in learning about this, and I have discovered that ‘luminescence’ is a feature of deep-sea fish so that I will be creating scenes and characters around this.
This is a scene reference I found from a 3D game, sky. This game uses very simple models to make incredible scenery effects. I like this presentation. It is a kind of Cel-shading.
This is the reference I found for the underwater scenery; I wanted to create a deep sea with blue and black as the main parts, with a bit of sunlight coming in so it would be darker and more suitable for the glowing creatures. The reference also has a screenshot of the game in the sky and a picture of ocean pollution; I wanted to incorporate these two elements into this animation.
This is the reference for the character as I want to stick with the previous character design elements, so I will use a different type of fish as the base this time. I’ve found a few tail fin shapes I like, a black-skinned character, and some glowing tattoos.
Character developing：
This is a character I designed earlier; this character is made of a whale shark as the primary element; I think the white spots on the whale shark are perfect for glowing in dark environments; most of the fish in the deep sea have lousy eyesight, so I designed the eyes to be white, and 60% of the fish in the deep sea glow, glowing is an essential survival skill for deep sea fish, so I used a dark blue base and painted the character’s hair is designed to glow to attract small fish to hide in the hair and take them home, this mermaid is still a collector.
After I designed the character, I realized it was too complex for my animation style, so I simplified it a bit and made the character female so it would looks cute
Final character
The materials that are already available: I have searched the internet for licensed models for the storyboard and used these stones to create the introductory scene (I will recreate these models later). Also, a friend of mine has created the underwater effect in Unreal for me. I will animate in Maya, model, and then move to unreal to develop scenes and effects. Problems: This is the first time I have used unreal to create a scene, which makes it challenging. I also need to learn more about special effects for the scene. Next: We are continuing to work on scene models and character models.
Please allow me to describe this semester’s assignment as very interesting.
It seems like we have a lot of work in this course, plus the group cooperation project, we are exhausted, but I have gained much knowledge and experience.
Regarding previs, I have never done 3D animatic so seriously. In previous assignments, I usually started to prepare the animation details after finishing the 2D animatic. I didn’t expect this process to be so important. To summarize my experience gained:
Body language is very important to a character, especially in an animation without any lines. The body language of each screen is to make the audience understand what the character is doing more simply and clearly.
The information in the scene is also important. In the feedback the teacher gave me, half of the information is in the scene. The amount of information contained in the scene in a shot cannot be ignored. The amount of information depends on the duration of a shot and the focus.
The connection of each shot is also very important. If the shot does not give people enough time, the audience will be confused.
Sound effects are also essential information in animation.
The beginning of a story requires a lot of worldview settings.
The most important points are probably these points. Because this assignment made me realize many deficiencies, I could improve at character body language, which also led me to find more information. Hence, This is where the title of the graduation thesis comes from——The interpretation of emotion by body language.
I am interested in the direction of my graduation thesis, and making character animation is also very happy. Creating a character to move flexibly has always been something I like very much. Experience is accumulated by practice, and talent is not important.
I’ve been hesitating about what exactly to focus on, and now I’m thinking that animation might be my first choice.
My graduation thesis aims to understand more theoretically what kind of body language can convey more information. By studying this topic, I hope to understand better what the body language that makes characters flexible is like. I can learn from The direction of theory masters more knowledge and information.
Of course, the animation that makes the model come alive is the part I like, and I still need to catch up on my modeling. I lack imagination in the design of the robot arm model. This is my shortcoming. But this homework made me re-acquainted with the work of rigging. Maya has many advanced rigging settings I need to learn, so I learned a lot of the most basic information.
I am delighted with the final effect of the robotic arm. After all, I like things that are extremely simple but very effective. I am satisfied with the final production of the robotic arm. The texture of tungsten steel and the cool technological style make the robotic arm look more advanced, but it can also be seen from this point that I am not very good at mechanical model design. This is my shortcoming. Although the result looks good, we still need to strengthen the design of the object.
It is also challenging to make an animation of a robotic arm because it is mechanical. Copying the movement of a human arm cannot reflect the mechanical sense of the arm. Mechanical things should have some inflexible performance, so making animations for robotic arms is very challenging.
This week I edited all the shots and improved the animation a bit. The plot becomes smoother and easier to understand as the changed shots get better. According to the teacher’s request last week, I changed several places and added some content according to my judgment. This is the final effect. I divided the cutscene into two parts. When the character dropped the box on the table, I deliberately made a “throwing” action, which is more flexible.
This is the effect after I improved:
*updated in the holiday I was fortunate the teacher was willing to give me some feedback during the holiday, so I changed the content again:
The character is attracted by the sound of gears rolling, preferably with sound effects or other effects that can represent the sound
The height when the character takes the gift box from the mailbox is wrong
“Your Admirer” on the box
The sound effect of character 2 knocking on the wall
The movement of character 2 walking one step is uncoordinated
The expression of character 1 changes in the subsequent shots (2D can be used)
The teacher said many things that needed to be changed in one breath… But it works! These changes can indeed convey more information, so I drew some auxiliary textures in PS, and I decided to use 2D comic effects to show the sound effects first.
Then this is the improvement I made with AE:
This is the sound of the gears and elevators creaking.
On the box: From your admirers.
This is what I judged to be added, an action scared by the clock’s bell, and the lightning symbol represents the bell of the watch.
This is character 2 knocking on the wall.
The following few pictures are the characters’ expressions, and the order is: surprised, shy, panicked and shy, and speechless.
End! (I think this font is cute, so I put it up)
The final previs：
I think that’s the final result of what I wanted to do with this story, it’s a little bit different from what I wanted to do in the first place, but it’s easier to understand, it’s engaging for the audience, and these changes are practical, attractive. The finished product makes me delighted, and I think it is a very warm and lovely story.
Mechanical arm class note:
This week, my job was to blend the arm animation with the video shot, all the work made in After Effect. Firstly, because my arm is a different shape from the robotic arm, it doesn’t cover my arm completely, so I created a new mask and added a gradient color to blend it more into the video.
Secondly, DaVinci’s keyer function was not perfect, and the outline of my arm was faintly visible, so I used the background image to obscure the part of the video below my small arm.
Finally, I found that the difference in brightness between the left and right sides of the video was significant and could cause disharmony, so I gave the right side of the image a higher brightness to make the overall video look more harmonious.
Because my robot arm design is simple, it was a bit boring after adding it to the screen. Thirty-five seconds of animation could add more interesting effects, so I added some attractive mechanical lights to the background, which is also a kind of animation, to make the screen look less boring.
Finally, I also added an animation of the aiming mechanical electronics to give the whole animation a storytelling look, with the character becoming a futuristic robotic warrior was being aimed.
Create a new mask to cover up the part without the arms.
Use an unoccupied background to mask the following part of the arm animation.
Lighten the right half.
The finished effect
Adding a fun little animation to the background
The effect of adding the robot arm：
This is the arm without the aiming animation. Cool enough, but it’s not interesting enough.
So I added another aiming animation， created the aperture first
Counting the number panel to the aperture
Add it to the animation and scale it over time to look like it’s being aimed or scanned.
For the group work this time, our group has six students, one with two foreign aids, because the two foreign aids only helped 5% of the 2D animation workload. Hence, the team members completed most of the projects.
We had a basic idea in the first week and finished all the preliminary designs in the second week. This idea is a combination of everyone’s thoughts. All members of our group are very enthusiastic. As a leader, I combined everyone’s ideas and filled in the theme I thought about at the beginning to make this final animation. At least for us, I am delighted with the result, and I am pleased to be able to cooperate with such a group of people.
In this group cooperation, I learned many new skills, increased my social skills, and tried a new organizational method. I hope that everyone can do what they are good at and like, so I observe, Communicate, understand, and assign different jobs to each person. Still, there may be a problem with giving jobs this way: everyone’s workload is different. This problem was reflected in the early stage, and some team members told me it should be assigned differently. It could be because I only look at the results and pay little attention to the process. Hence, I thought it was normal for people with strong abilities to do more things because we all want to make something good. After they reported this matter to me, I adjusted the amount of work. After that, everyone accepted it and was earnest about their work.
As a leader, you should discover the work the team members are good at and give full play to this ability. I did try my best in this group cooperation. Some people are good at design; some are good at painting; some are good at painting; some are good at modeling, and some have a great artistic aesthetic. Fortunately, the members of our group each have their unique strengths.
Some team members had a problem with the job they were doing. She doesn’t know what kind of work she likes, so I sometimes assign different types of work to her. I am such a person because I don’t have a favorite job, so I have some knowledge about each position.
This group cooperation taught me that I am better at rigging and modeling. I could improve at scene production, but I like it very much, so I will still learn some knowledge in this direction. Overall, I enjoyed the teamwork, and we pushed our limits in such a short amount of time.
The work of this week has been relatively easy. Our team plans to complete the animation one week in advance. With everyone’s hard work and reasonable arrangement of time, we completed the basic animation and special effects one week in advance.
Final animation
My friend edited three suitable BGMs for me and merged them into a proper length for the scene, but it is not rich. Since we still had much time, I made some simple sound effects.
Tingyi helped me find many sound effects on the Internet. I chose the most suitable one and used Adobe Audition to synthesize the sound effects.
The functions I use more: For noise reduction, extract a part of the noise and then denoise the entire audio
Fade-in and fade-out effect
Rack Effect – Parametric Equalizer
I use this function to edit the sound. This function can reduce the sound of each frequency, and I use this function to make the sound clearer.
Rack Effect – Pitch Shifter
I use this function to change the pitch of the voice. In the animation, David’s voice is a girl’s voice. After being lowered by me, it becomes a male voice.
There are also some basic settings, such as the size of the sound and the settings of the left and proper channels.
My main job in this week is to use After Effects to integrate 2D and 3D animation.
First, I rendered all the 3D animation sequences of the virtual scene, and Yiyu, who made the actual scene, also rendered the 3D animation of the natural scene. I sorted all the resources and put them in a folder. Jieyi gave me the three sketches she drew as resources and finally imported them into the after-effect database.
I made the part about the virtual world first because this part requires a lot of animation with special effects. I pre-compose each shot to make it easier to produce.
In the post-compositing, I did not use a lot of special effects. The main special effects are Fill, blur, glow, and mask animation, mainly used to match some overlapping, time, and match rhythm of 2D animation with the rhythm of 3D animation, etc.
Almost all 3D scenes use simple materials, making the animation style more cartoony, with no particularly complicated effects. Still, the effect of combining with simple 2D animation is satisfactory. Coupled with some motion graphic animation, I think the final effect was quite interesting.
In compositing, I use the tracking and mask functions the most. most of the 2D animation drawing mistakes can be solved with these two functions. These two functions are also very suitable for 2D animation production occlusion, such as the paint river in the scene and some frogs interact with the scene.
The use of 3D layers is also very suitable for this animation. I used this layer to make animation transitions and a virtual screen that rotates 360° in the scene’s center.
It is worth mentioning that there is no need for a particularly complicated animation in the scanning animation. Just let the audience know that this action is “scanning” and “uploading.” Hence, I use the trim paths function of the line to combine the drawing frame shape and use the most detailed animation with appropriate animation rhythm and timing so that the painting on the table in the movie looks like it has been scanned and uploaded.
Virtual scene rendering
Rendering of realistic scenes( by Yitu)
Paintings for transition (by Jieyi)
The entire After effect project file
Special effects used in production
Fill: I generally use this to change colors：
Gaussian blur: Generally used to produce effects that conform to the depth of field in 3D scenes：
glow: commonly used when making motion graphic animations with a sense of technology:
Tracking: Tracking is generally divided into 2D and 3D because the lens movement is relatively simple, so I only use 2D tracking, which is used to keep the 2D animation in the correct position in the lens:
Mask: The mask is straightforward to use. Generally, I use it to modify the drawing errors of some 2D animations and the occlusion relationship between objects in the scene.:
3D layer: the use of this layer needs to create a camera in the composition so that this picture can be used as a 3D panel, which I use to make virtual screens in animation:
The simplest transform animation:
trim paths: The function that can make the lines stretch. I created the effect of scanning light by combining mask, 3D layer, transform, opacity, and trim path and using a suitable rhythm:
I got feedback from my teacher this week and was very happy that she thought my previs was good and that I could understand clearly what the character was doing, although there were still some details that needed to be changed, which was very encouraging.
The teacher still pointed out a few details:
The animation of the character picking up something needs to be clearer
The animation of the character looking at the watch needs a pocket watch model
The transition angle could be better. It needs to be changed to the character picking up the box, standing up and walking into the room, and then filming the character entering the house from this perspective
The teacher is trying to make what I am doing getting better and more detailed, so I am stil satisfied.
This is the shot of the character picking something up, not clear enough:
This is the action of the character looking at his watch, not enough information:
Process animations that need to be changed:
Mechanical arm class note:
The robotic arm finally gets to the animation part!!!
Making the model was fun, but I ran into many problems, each of which made me tired (although the feeling of accomplishment from making it made me happy)
Anyway, I also enjoyed the animation and compositing part, so I will animate the arm and finally replace my arm with this one!
I took the video of the arm movement with green gloves to make it easier to post-process. I chose a dark hallway and wore black, so I hope this video will look cool
After took the video, I need to process the video first, import it into the DaVinci, confirm the available duration of this animation in the timeline, then add a 3Dkeyer effect to this video in the effects screen, where I can remove the selected color from the screen, and use a scene without a character as the background, then done keying.
The finished video was rendered into a jpg image sequence and imported into Maya using the method taught by our teacher last term, so that we could easily create an arm animation.
The arm animation is relatively easy to create. The main tricky thing is to make the mechanical arm flexible but less natural than a human arm. It needs some mechanical feel.
I had some problems with the rendering, I used to render in PNG format, and the background was not transparent. This is because only exr can render the alpha channel. It took me a lot of time to figure out this problem…
The original video:
Importing DaVinci to remove the green arm:
Add an alpha channel node to the video and add a 3D keyer effect to the node:
Importing the video and animating in Maya:
The rendering setup has been torturing me for a long time ….. It really took me hours and hours to try to solve this problem, but I didn’t expect this solution could be these easy.
This is the final result of the animation in Maya:
(An objective review, is really cool, and I like it!)
*Only a little time was allotted to animation this week as I had to complete my thesis outline and spent a lot of time reviewing materials.
Previs class note:
This week, as I didn’t go to class due to illness, my teacher didn’t check my homework, nor did I have any feedback. Still, I completed the requirements that my teacher mentioned last time and drew a lot of 2D illustrations. Then I merged them into the animation using AE, which makes it easier for the audience to understand what the animation bubbles are saying. Apart from that, I was also wondering if I could use one of my other character designs to make up a story that could be animated.
Illustrations appearing in the protagonist’s idea bubble：
This is the animation after changing all the animation issues from last week.：
Mechanical arm class note:
Last week I finished drawing the texture of the robotic arm and tried to render it. This week I linked the texture to the model and adjusted different properties for each material. Finally, I added HDIR to the robotic arm as ambient light. To simulate my In the stairwell where the video was shot, I especially found a room with similar cement walls as the light source.
As I expected, the rendered shell looks like tungsten steel. I like this texture very much. It looks like light blue self-illumination. Especially tech-savvy.
All the texture:
Connected in Maya:
After experimenting several times, I found an apparent difference between the Arnold rendering and the substance painter rendering, the same material rendered differently, so I changed some of the data in Maya based on this：
Render in Maya:
I prefer Cel-shading animations, so this rendering is just right for me.
HDRI: This unfinished studio, I think, is very close to the stairwell where I took the video
Render in Maya (without light) :
（My sentiment is that it’s really cool, and I super like it! ）
I learned a lot of new things this time, and rigging has never been an area of expertise for me. Still, it was very satisfying to get the model rigged and moving, so in conclusion, although I had many technical problems, I am still pleased with the design and the rendering.
Draft thesis:
This week we have added an assignment where we need to prepare a title and a draft for our thesis. I have been reviewing a lot of information and organizing what I need so far, writing a rough structure for my thesis, and stating what I want to write about. This thesis will deepen my understanding of animation and body language and help me to make exciting and flexible animations.
The interpretation of emotion by body language – the way emotion influences character animation
Keywords.
Expression of emotion, body language, character personality, animation interest, Exaggerated dynamics
Hypothetical question:
Character animations are influenced by emotions through the character’s body language
Abstract:
This essay intends to investigate the effect of body language on the expression of emotion in characters and the enhancement of the overall character animation fun. I will argue and examine credible sources of information to find out how emotion affects character animation through character body language.
Introduction:
This essay will examine why character animation needs emotion; the link between human body language and emotion; the need for body language in animation; the reasons for human body language; body language and human body structure; the link between character personality and body language and finally non-physical body shape-shifting and exaggerated approaches to body language in animation. The main question at the heart of this is how emotion influences character animation. I hypothesize that emotion is influenced by a great deal of body language and is a necessary expression in character animation. The ways and types of expression are then part of what we will explore. I plan to delve into how body language is produced and used in animation to enrich my understanding of animation. Expressive body language is integral to emotional expression in animation.
Literature review:
In the current study, Dahle’s 2019 paper nicely supports part of the argument about body language (Dahle, 2019), where Dahle argues that body language is strongly linked to culture, examining how Western and East Asian cultures use and perceive body language by comparing Eastern and Western 3D characters. He illustrates through comparative experiments that body language can express emotions. He also suggests two types of body language: acquired and instinctive, with acquired body language being more personal and culturally influenced. He also mentions Disney’s 12 principles of animation.
However, This paper needs to add more comparison experiments, as body language can vary greatly depending on age.
In Larsson’s paper (2014), we can learn most of the well-established ideas about body language and the role of body language and the argument that emotions are shown through body language in animation, stating that 93% of human communication is made up of body language, that facial expressions are also a form of body language. Larsson believed body language makes characters more flexible. The subjects in the thesis do not have facial animation, which would make body language beyond the face even more important. This experiment argues for the importance of body language in animation and how it can be expressed in theory.
This paper also states that if character animation needs to be made more realistic, animators must understand emotions and how to express them. (Larsson, 2014) However, body language has very many specifics. At the end of the paper, Larsson also mentions that if more complex body language expressions are needed, then greater experimentation and further research are needed.
Regarding the classification of the emotions expressed, Ennis et al., in their 2013 paper and experiments, have shown that different emotions are shown differently through body language in character animation, with the most expressive being anger, followed by happiness, fear, and sadness, while this paper also compares the gender difference and finds that male characters are not as accurate in portraying emotions as female characters in terms of the expressiveness of body language for both genders. The paper also compares gender differences in body language expression, finding that male characters are less accurate than female characters in portraying emotions and less physically expressive than female characters (Ennis. et al., 2013). This paper is very informative in confirming the link between body language and gender. However, Motion capture technology in 2013 was less advanced than in modern times, so their access to resources and information was limited.
Body language is an expression of emotion, and in the paper published by Zibrek et al., which explores the use of body language by robots to express gender and emotion and uses some psychological theories to mimic human experiments, the study also shows that people can recognize gender from body movements and that stereotypes of emotional expression can influence perceptions, thus showing that perceptions of body movements are also popular and prevalent ( Zibrek, 2015)
In addition, body language is said to be a human trait, as only humans have such a wide range of emotions. In their 2017 paper, Aulia and Aditya analyzed the body language of non-human species. The study concludes that if interesting, accessible, and understandable characters are to be designed, it is necessary to combine the characteristics of the species with human body language, thus demonstrating that body language is also common to non-human characters. (Aulia and Aditya, 2017) However, this paper is limited to rats, and more examples of non-human characters using human body language are needed to make a stronger case for using human body language.
Logical thinking: emotional expression is significant for animation. The primary way to express emotion is through language, and body language is also an integral part of animation and how emotion affects animation body language.
Main article.
The connection between body language and human emotion → Methods of interpreting emotion
Understanding of body language → Scientific classification of body language and some basic concepts
The need for emotion in character animation → Why body language is needed in animation →
The production of exaggerated body language → The impact of some exaggerated body language on character animation → Evidence of the importance of body language in animation.
Conclusion:
Emotion is an essential element for animation, and body language is a very important way for emotion to be expressed so that emotion can have a significant impact on energy through methods such as xxxxxxxxxx of body language.
Aulia, E. and Aditya, C. (2017) “Panawa” Animation Movement Design: Rat character with human …, “Panawa” animation movement design: Rat character with human personality. IEEE. Available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8266053 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Ennis, C. et al. (2013) Emotion Capture: Emotionally Expressive Characters for Games. Association for Computing Machinery New York, NY, United States. Available at: https://dl-acm-org.arts.idm.oclc.org/doi/10.1145/2522628.2522633 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
McGill, J. (2021) Finding personality in animation, Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. East Tennessee State University. Available at: https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/642/ (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Mourot, L. et al. (2021) A Survey on Deep Learning for Skeleton-Based Human Animation, Computer Graphics Forum. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.14426 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Schindler, K., Gool, L.V. and Gelder, B.de (2008) Recognizing emotions expressed by body pose: A biologically inspired neural model, Redirecting. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2008.05.0033 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Volume 21, Issue 9, November 2008, Pages 1238-1246
Thaler, A. et al. (2020) Attractiveness and Confidence in Walking Style of Male and Female Virtual Characters. IEEE. Available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9090610/ (Accessed: February 28, 2023).
Thomas, S. et al. (2022) Investigating how speech and animation realism influence the perceived personality of virtual characters and agents. IEEE. Available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9756815 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Zibrek, K. et al. (2015) Exploring the effect of motion type and emotions on the perception of gender in virtual humans, ACM Transactions on Applied Perception. Association for Computing Machinery New York, NY, United States. Available at: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2767130 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Zong, M., Qi, Z. and Zong, Z. (2020) Research on character expression shaping in animation movies, Research on Character Expression Shaping in Animation Movies | Atlantis Press. Atlantis Press. Available at: https://www.atlantis-press.com/proceedings/iccese-20/125937024 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
I divided the animation into different shots and used Maya’s reference function to make animation shots. To spend less time on rendering, each shot only shows the model needed for the plot, and because of the use of reference, when it needs to be changed, As long as the source file is changed, all shots can be guaranteed to have consistent data.
At the same time, when setting up the camera, I chose to use focus distance, which can focus the audience’s eyesight on the main character on this screen and give the camera a sense of depth.
In terms of lighting, I gave the scene an area light as the primary light source and set the shadow color of the main light source to blue because the scene with blue shadows and orange tones is very suitable. And I also put a fill light used to brighten the entire carpet, then to make the character brighter, I set emission attribute for each character and added a fill light to each character’s face. The shadow of each fill light has a different color. This light is noticeable on the white plaster material and can create a colorful effect.
During the week, the 2D animation students drew and colored several animations, and I blended the rendered 3D backgrounds with these animations to create prototypes of the animation. There is an interaction between our 2D character and the 3D character, so we need to confirm the exact animation style of the 2D with this animation test:
At the same time, I also completed the texture of the character, which is a rendering test that proves the character’s plaster material is susceptible to ambient colors:
This is a separate shot of the different animations:
This is the model file:
This is one of the shot’s lens settings, all the settings are similar to this one, the red ones are the focal length settings.:
This is a map of all the lighting shown by maya, you can see that the light is bluish throughout and that each character has a fill light, this subtle lighting will be adjusted depending on the shot and will be different for each shot:
In this week’s previs, I corrected some problems from last time. The feedback the teacher gave me was also straightforward. It was some details that needed to be added. After thinking, I tried adding a shot to clarify the story. This can make the meaning of animation conveyed evident and understandable.
Teacher’s feedback:
Add content to each bubble
move from sitting a little wider
Hold the movement of the character when turning his head until the next shot
Remove the zoomed shot and replace it with a stylized effect or an avatar-sized black background
My teacher once suggested that I could end the story with a shocking shot of the character, but I think it would be more appropriate to end it with a shot of the character feeling ashamed.
Give the letterhead model a decal to read what is written on it
Add a drawing to each bubble to at least know what is being conveyed
The turn of the head on this shot does not connect to the next shot
This is the animation that has been changed from last week’s feedback:
Mechanical arm class note:
This week I grouped all the structures in the robotic arm in the outliner, cut the UVs, and then classified them for texture drawing. I still use SP to draw the texture. There are three materials: one shell, one gear, and one bearing. The shell and gear are drawn with SP. The bearing material is directly established in Maya, and the data is adjusted.
The method taught by the teacher is to use nodes to make materials in Maya, but I intend to make something other than realistic materials. I want my mechanical arm to keep simple, so I used black and silver and added some blue emission pattern on the edges, which can make it looks like “energy.” I added two gems to the arm to cause the arm’s ” energy ” element to protrude. I like this simple and beautiful design very much.
