Project 5 : Character Motion

Winter 2000

Project 5 : Character Motion
Storyboard: Tuesday, February 29, in class
Key Poses Due: Thursday BEFORE 8:00 AM, March 2
Animation Due: Tuesday BEFORE 8:00 AM, March 7

Reading: Chapter on Motion - Pages 154-228

In this assignment, you will apply what you've learned about animation to a human character. Your task will be to create a short animation that tells the story of the scene sent to your group leader via email. Each group will receive a short vignette to animate. You will also be working with a pre-made human character for this assignment.
You will do the work in three stages: (1) plan out (storyboards): include timing (number of frames), camera angles, first and last pose design. (2) create key poses that clearly demonstrate the feeling or action you're trying to achieve and animate between your key poses, adding refinement until the motion really tells the story.

What to do

1. plan out your actions

- Discuss with your group what kinds of actions would best express your character's mood or the situation he's in. If he's angry, does he tear his hair out, kick something, or just sit there and stew? Act it out, and see what feels right. Have someone in the group sketch possible poses to see if they "read" correctly: show them to strangers and see if they get the point.

2. create key poses

-Copy the file proj5setup.mb to your scenes directory (or just open it from Maya and save it to your scenes directory). This file contains a generic human character named "Mack" whom you will use for this assignment.

Starting from your sketches or from real life, bend Mack into a set of extreme key poses that unmistakably convey what's going on. There should be at least three poses for each person in the group, but you may create as many as you need to tell the story. Render and turn in an image for each pose.

3. animate your shot

Now you must create the motion that links one pose to the next. Start by getting the overall timing right: how long does each transition take? How long does he hold each pose? Think about weight and balance, anticipation and follow-through.

          -You might animate the character by blocking out the motion at the root of the hierarchy and working your way out to the extremities. Or, if you prefer, you can create each inbetween pose in its entirety and keyframe the whole character at once. As a final step, add all the missing nuances and details: breaking the joints, asymmetry, overlapping action, squash and stretch.
          -You must do your animation at 30 frames per second. Be sure to set the FPS before you play back your tests. Break the shots down however you want within your group, but the total time of all animations combined must be no more than 12 seconds.

4. extra credit (optional)

If you finish the rest of this assignment early and would like to experiment some more, you might try one of the following:

Animate a movable prop for your character to interact with.

Bring in a second character and have the two interact.

Do a repeating walk (or run or swim) cycle.

Write and animate your own story!

Note: you may not start the extra credit until the rest of the assignment is finished. So start early!

What we're looking for

This is a good time to think about staging. How should the camera be positioned so that the poses are the most clear? Also think about how the transition from one shot to the next might feel. Let the cuts make sense: try to avoid cutting from a long shot to an extreme closeup, or rotating the camera 180 degrees in one cut.

At this point you should spend some time getting used to the "Mack" character. Practice selecting different joints and rotating them. Practice using the IK handles and constraints to move the limbs around. Once you feel comfortable with Mack, start working on your key poses.

Concentrate on telling the story with body language. Focus on the character's intentions so that it looks self-motivated and not like an inanimate puppet. Things that will help the motion look natural are: thinking about the weight of the character, getting the center of gravity in the right place, staggering sub-motions (e.g., to turn around, first the head turns, then the body, then the legs), overlapping actions (e.g. reaching for doorknob while taking off coat). And remember, timing is everything!

REMEMBER: This is a ANIMATION assignment, we'll be looking for how well the motion of your character conveys the story you're trying to tell. Fancy lighting, shading, and/or props won't get you any plus points, just concentrate on the animation of your character. Everyone should be able to tell what your character is doing just by watching how it moves and acts.

Turn in
In class on Tuesday, February 29:

   1.   Storyboards

All images (poses and animations) must be 720 x 486 pixels.
Before 8:00am on Thursday, March 2, put the following in your group turnin directory:

README file. In addition to listing who did which shot, include the file format for the images.

Images of key poses. Name them so that the shot and frame range for that pose are clear. For example, if you have 4 poses in your shot you should name the images something like shot1_frames_0-30, shot1_frames_31-36, shot1_frames_37-60, and shot1_frames_61-80. The frame number will determine the timing for your shot when we transfer the poses to video tape (e.g. if you turn in shot1_frame_1-30, shot1_frame_31-46, and shot1_frame_47-62, then the first pose will play for 1 second, the second pose will play for .5 seconds, and the third pose will play for .5 seconds). Turn in three or more poses for each of the shots. It is very important that you finish this in time and name the files properly, otherwise, your work won't be shown as you intended.

Before 8:00am on Thursday, March 7, put the following in your group turnin directory:

an updated README file. The README file should tell us what file format you used for each shot. For this assignment, leave your finished frames in your directory and tell us how your frames are named (e.g. if your frames are shot1.0, shot1.1, ...., shot1.121, then tell us that your shot name is shot1).

If you did extra credit animations, please list these in the README in the same format as the required shots (leave them in your pix directory).

It is important that you turn in your work before 8:00 am on these dates! Your work will not be shown otherwise, and you will not receive credit for the assignment.

Rendering an animation:

           - For the final animation, you will have to render out all frames of your animation, to do this, go to Window->Render Globals, and change the "Frame/Animation Ext" option to "name.#". Make sure your start and end frames correspond to the frames you want to render. Close the Render Globals window. When you're ready to render the animation, go to Render->(Save) Batch Render. You will be prompted to enter a file name, choose something descriptive (jilano_shot1_group2) then click "Save/Render". The Render will start and the images will be placed in your "images" subdirectory. Turn all the images into your turnin directory by 8:00am on Thursday March 7.