Hey Guys!! I thought I will share with u'll the Method That I used to animate my Pendulum. This method woks Only for the Settle and not for the Starting part.. and may not Work on body... Its Like It will not work in 9 out of 10 Cases... I just found it useful in this.. But I don't use this method when I am animate Body Mechanics..I think this methods is not too helpfull when used on Body mechanics..
So wht I did was I first Created my Extremes ( The Height pose's in the settle) . Depends on the number of swing your pendulum makes when it settles... I had around 8 maybe... So lets Think we have done our 8 swings.....
Then I just select the Controls and Flat the Tangent... Then Select the Bottom three controller Leaving the top one.. and move the keys two frames ahead.. and then De-select everything and select the Bottom two controls and move the frame again two frames ahead.. Again de-select and then Select the last controller in the bottom and move the Keys two frames ahead again.. ( Just move the frames ahead of just the settle part in the animation...I mean the frames of the settle part in the Pendulum animation... I left the rest the same).. and then Play ur Animation and see the magic...
I am sorry abt my English if I'm not able to make This clear enough.. But just Mail me anytime if u need anymore help with it.. anuj.animator@yahoo.com..
Finally Done with Tailor Got a few Little Critiques... Would make those Changes by the end of this week... This week in our lecture Bobby talked abt Walk.. and showed us how we could Animate a Walk.. And also animated a walk to show us.... It was really Fun...
Walks Are the Basics of animation.. Though we first animate a walk as the Basic to start learning animation... U can't get it right the First time... Its very Hard... Nobody Walks Perfectly.. Each step is Different.. But For general a vanilla walk is almost like 24 frames per Step.. This is Not for every body.. If you try recording youself... you will find that you sometime walk at 12FR, sometime at 16FR and sometime maybe at 14Fr.. OLD people walk slowly so they might me around 20Fr.... Its not always the same.. Each step is different.. And every person walks Differently and Walk also change depending on your Mood... But a basic Start we were asked to animate our First Walk at 12Fr...
Walks (and runs) are parts of some basic animations exercises as are the pendulum, the bouncing balls or the weight shift. Despite this, walks are not an easy subject and require some research before we start diving into them, as Shawn Kelly points out in one of his post. It's important to start with some reference, ideally some live-action footage.
There are Five Main poses in Walk:-
1] Contact
2] Down
3]Passing
4]Up
5]Contact
You might want have a look over these Site to get a much better Info on Walk...
1] Brendan Body's Blog 2] Francis Jasmin has Cool info on Walks ( checkout his rest of the Blog too its filles with some awesome Infomation..
and also Watch Richard Willams Animation Survival Kit He explanis Walks Very Clearly.. and If possible watch his Video's.. He explains walks in them in an awesome Way..
For this week we had to Submit out Blocking of Vanilla ( Just the Blocking ) and a Strength Pose...
Here's my assignment..
Week 7!! This going crazier and crazier... For this week Lecture we had Victor Navone Talk to us abt Spline and how to use them... I don't use splines Much but they Are really helpful and can help in getting nice Output... You'll should have a look at his Pages where is explains what exactly he Talks to us abt splines... Have a look at it even if u spline less in ur workflow...these are really helpful...
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! Its the Tailor... For this week we have to animate the Tailor... This is really hard to animate... Its going to made me Crazy and finally did... Had to sleep less.. However By this time of the Term my Sleeping timing are already messed up... I am not sure when or how much I sleep...
At Animation Mentor We have a a Twins actually many Twins... But The Pratt's Twins are the Best.. They Always post some great Information On everyone's wall that are really Helpful... This week Cameron Pratt posted this on my workspace I love it very much so thought to post it here too...
This week's assignment is very similar to last week's: take a segmented
object and give it overlapping action. So what's the big difference
between the pendulum and Tailor? The difference is that with Tailor, not
only are you trying to give your object a good sense of overlap, but your
new goal is also to get the ball and tail to feel like a living creature.
This means that the tail has to feel like it has some control over
itself, like a cat or squirrel's tail, and not flop around lifelessly
behind like last week's pendulum.
To get this feeling, the first thing we need to do is animate the ball,
or body of our Tailor rig. Just like animating the platform first in your
last assignment, animating the ball will give you the arcs, path of
action, and anything else you will need to get your tail moving nicely.
You can hide each individual section of the tail in the layers panel,
which will help you focus on getting the ball looking just right.
Now that we have our body set up, we can start on the tail. There are a
few ways you can go about this. The first method is to animate each
section of the tail at a time, starting with the root and working your
way up through the sections. The pros of this method is that you only
have to focus on one control at a time, which makes things a lot easier
to manage. Doing it this way also means you can use the pendulum trick of
copying the rotations of the first section, copying it down to the next
and offsetting it slightly. However the cons are that your tail might end
up looking disjointed, since you haven't taken the tail as a whole into
consideration, and using the copied curves trick will only get you a
start. You'll still need to adjust each section afterwards.
The second method is to animate the whole tail pose-to-pose, going
through your shot and blocking out the main poses and paying attention to
the arcs of the tail. The benefits of this method are that you can keep
track of the tail's curves more easily, and you also get a better sense
of weight since you're working with the whole tail and not one small
section at a time. However, the biggest disadvantage is that it can be
very easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of controls and lose track on
how the tail curves are supposed to move through your shot.
Choose whichever method you feel works best for you. Both are perfectly
fine to use, and if you find a different way of doing things that works
better for you, then go ahead and use it! But whichever method you use,
remember that the tail should work the same either way. Which brings us
to the next topic:
Tail Mechanics
So now that we have our ball going and our work method figured out, let's
get started with the tail! This actually won't be too long an explanation
because most of it you already know, having done the pendulum assignment.
Unlike the pendulum, which has a loose and uncontrolled overlapping
action, a tail has bones and muscles, which means that Tailor has much
greater control over its movements. It won't flop around behind him but
instead flow with a wave-like action, and settle as he slows down. Here's
an image to demonstrate the motion:
If you imagine the squirrel's hips as a ball, it will give you an almost
perfect representation of Tailor. And as you can see, while the hips
bounce up, the tail drags downward behind it in a C-shaped curve, because
the tail, just like the pendulum, wants to stay in place as long as
possible. Then, when the hips reach the peak, the tail catches up, going
into an S-shaped curve as the base of the tail follows the body and the
tip is still following the upward arc. Finally, the curve reverses into a
C as it drags upwards behind the dropping hips. It's important that the
tail tip flows along the same arc as the base of the tail, only delayed.
You can see it clearly in the first 4 drawings in the image above. Even
though the hips are already dropping to the ground, the tail tip is going
up along the path of the tail, and it's always pointed to where it was in
the last pose.
This dragging motion is what defines a good overlapping tail. If you have
the tip swinging stiffly up and down, or have the tail going up while the
ball goes up, and down as the ball drops down, then the tail isn't
overlapping, but moving against the motion of the driving force of the
the ball.
Here is a great example of overlapping in a tail in action. This is a
clip from the amazingly animated Sword in the Stone, and if you haven't
seen it yet, I highly recommend you check it out. It's a goldmine of
animation to study.
As you can see, when the squirrels start, their tails are curled into an
S-shape, keeping it up and out of the way. But as they start to run, the
tail drags behind, because of drag and for balance, overlapping in a
smooth wave-like motion. Then as they slow down and stop, their tails
curl back up behind them, settling into its original S-shaped curve.
Thanks CameronPratt.
But anyways here's my assignment... NEVER SKIP THIS ASSIGNMENT IF UR STARTING TO LEARN ANIMATION....
This is really getting Busy.. Its said right if u want to Do AM do it full time for making full use of... I can't believe 6 week and I made a lot more new Friends... we have also started to Hangout on Google+ Daily.... It really super Fun...
For this week Our Lecture was All abt overlapping action.. and We were also told cool trick to animate a pendulum By Bobby... I have my own trick to animate a Pendulum..Which I will say in While... I would Recommend U'll to go to this page....
It covers Almost every thing that was told to us in out lecture... I really like this Page very much... and then back to How I animate a Pendulum... U guys might have Watched Keith Lango's video on Animating a Pendulum..Those are very nice..If not I would recommend to go and watch them Now...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgwGWE3CUhk&feature=player_embedded (it has three parts)
But not Really wht I did.... I first animated my base (the Block) and the for the Settle I created the Extremes of my pendulum and then Selected the last three joints of the pendulum and moved the Keys of the Settle two frames ahead...and the again select the last two Controls and move the keys two frames ahead.. and then select the Last control and move the keys two frames ahead... Have the Graph of these keys to be Flat... Then Play it watch the Magic... But this method only works for the settle... For the part in the starting and middle section of the animation... I used my special Animator eye's... Some People also use this method to get Overlap in the body..but I don't like to do it this way for the Body... I prefer to go by posing the poses...
Anyways This Weeks assignment as U have known was to Animate a Pendulum... and yup no pose This week... Here's mine..
Looks like the journey is Getting started I got a little more busy than the Previous week. But I will try to post Every time I have time.
So this Week we had Shawn Kelly Explaining us about squash and Stretch... Squash and Stretch help in Giving life to the Character. Even to a Ball or to a Human Bi-ped Character.. Every thing squashes and stretches.. It Can be used to give anticipation in a Motion. Anticipation is very imp without anticipation the Animation looks Odd. and Don't Think that there is no Anticipation in real life.. Every thing anticipated before doing a action.. For Example if you want to jump your are going to go down a bit before you go up. If you want to Throw a Ball you have to move your hand back and then throw it Front..
Anticipation is Very imp.It brings Life to the Character like all the other principles it is also imp and necessary.. Anticipation tells the audiance that the character is going to do something and how strong the next action is going to be..Anticipation can also be used to add Comedy in our animation like having the Character anticipate as if he is going to hit hard or run very fast then then not to make him Go fast or hit hard.. This also looks nice because the audience would be Expecting something else and you give them something else..but not in all cases.. Sometime Anticipation is very subtle is not seen on the animation but just felt like the ball going a little back for one frame and then going front.. this is not seen but felt in the animation. All these small changes really make some Changes in the animation.
"Tell the Audience that you are going to do something. Do it. Then tell them you did". -Charlie Chaplin
And Then My assignment for this week was to animate a Obstacle Course with Squash and stretch and also Create a Pose Showing Devastation. and yup like always Planning them before animating them..its is very imp to plan before you animate. I must agree Obstacle is the best way to learn Timing. You should definitely try it It made me crazy for some time..
Wow this is like riding super fast jet rocket... One month almost over... And I feel like I just started yesterday... For this week we had Carlos lecture about Timing and Spacing.
He explains how How timing and Spacing is Imp and how it helps to give movement and in our Animation. Animation is not abt moving the object or character from A-B its abt how you move it.
A bad Timing is Mechanical, there is no physics in it, The object is just moved and Not animated. But in a good Timing the movement make sense and is Interesting to watch and the Physics are also Applied in it..
Timing & spacing always goes hand in hand together when talking about animation, they are usually influenced by
a number of laws :
"Wight" "Gravity" "Momentum" "Inertia" "Acceleration & Deceleration" and "other Force"
The main thing to remember is that we should always try braking up the Timing while animating, repetitive
motion tends to be boring. breaking off the rhythm makes something as simple
as Bouncing Ball much more interesting.
"A-a-a-animation.....it's..a-a-all...in the timing...a-a-and in... the
spacing......(long pause).....stay-y-y-n-nge...that the
americans....were the ones to work this out..." -Grim Natwick
My assignment for this Week is that we had to Animate two ball One is to be Heavy and the other light. (Heavy Ball and light ball).
My mentor was happy with my Bouncing Ball.. I got no critique on my
bouncing ball... but had A good amount of Critique on my Pose... He said
that the line of action of my pose was going to right and if I was
animate that pose that I had to place the next pose to the right and not
up... So I had make some Changes in it...
