Liam De Bolla
3D Character Animator
Summer Work
At the start of the summer, I was signed up to AnimDojo where I was able to understand new workflows as well as have my work critiqued by industry in the coming months. AnimDojo showed me a new way to structure my animation workflow and I wanted to test out how the new workflow would be for me. For my first animation, I entered the competition, 'The Big Jig'. From this, I needed a dance that lasted four seconds and had to be in a cycle. I had the idea of a character sliding into the scene and coming back out, for it then to loop back again. From experimenting with the new techniques I have found from AnimDojo, I was able to produce and submit this animation for the competition which can be seen on the Big Jig Instagram page.
There was another competition I entered from Facebook which was the 'AnimChallenge Group'. This is where a word is chosen once a month to be the topic of a 10-second animation. The word for when I entered was 'Abracadabra'. From AnimDojo, I learnt the 'Four Frame Rule' which I implemented into this performance. My previous animation was not created with the help of my own reference which made the animation harder to complete. For this animation, I recorded reference to help with timing and posing. I still wanted this animation to be cartoony so the character would bounce between poses to exaggerate emotion. This work was critiqued on the website below which helped me know what I was doing right and what I was doing wrong. For example, my poses on the extremes were good but the bounce ruined the pose. I should have stayed with the exaggerated pose without the bounce to make the pose look more realistic. From this, I wanted to experiment at more realistic animation.
I wanted to make a realistic animation with realistic movement and characters. The change in rigs was good for me to understand that a rigs complexity will depend on the character as this animation did not have as many rig controllers as the Malcolm rig I normally animate with. I found these rigs quite difficult to animate but was able to produce the animation below. I edited reference from clips to make the reference fit the animation I planned to create. I edit my reference on Premiere Pro but do not import the reference into the Maya scene which I found to be harder to animate. After this, I began to create realistic animation that had a reference in the Maya scene.
I also wanted to experiment with creature animation. From this, I created two Deer animations. One was focused on performance where the Deer is looking out for predators. and then eating. The other is a run cycle as I have had a lot of focus on character performance over locomotive animation. I brought the reference into the Maya scene which helped me animate the realistic movement in a more efficient way than previous animations. The reference was a texture on a cube. I exported the reference as a Targa from Premiere Pro and applied the cube with the file as a texture. From this, the sequence of Targa's could change the texture as I scroll through the time slider. I found this reference technique to be very beneficial for my workflow.
Still working on realistic animation, I wanted to do character performance where the movement was not exaggerated and looked cartoony. I also wanted to collaborate with one of my colleagues to see how that workflow would be. I chose to work with tarrik as I know he is working on animating at the time of the animation. I worked on one character which is the character standing up and Tarrik worked on the character sitting down. I created the reference and animated my character first and sent Tarrik the Maya Project. Tarrik was then able to animate his character and send back the Maya project back to me. Now the animation was completed, I was able to work on the lighting and rendering of the scene. I liked the workflow of collaborating with someone on a Maya project and the experience of this was very benefital for me. The key poses and movement would be very close to the reference to help make the characters more in a realistic way. I was happy with the outcome of the animation and wanted to do another animation with the a colleague.
From collaborating with a colleague where we both used Maya to animate, I wanted to experiment with working with a 2D animator. I decided I wanted to create an animation where a 3D character would put on a 2D coat. From this, I decided to work with Rahmel who I know does 2D animation at the time of the animation. I recorded the reference and animated the 3D character putting on a coat without the coat. I found this to be a challenging but interesting workflow. I rendered the scene and sent it to Rahmel. He then used the same reference to then help him animate the 2D coat to the scene. I was also happy with this collaboration and outcome. I now have some experience with collaborating with oeople on aniamtion projects and I am confident to do more.
I wanted to make one last animation before going back in October so I made another realistic animation where I recorded the reference of three characters and animated the scene. Over the summer, I have seen that my animating has become quicker and I have experienced different workflows I could incorporate into my pipeline.
I found after this animation that I also enjoy rendering and lighting. Tarrik asked me to render some animations for him which helped me practice rendering. Overall, I have produced work that has me prepared for the start of the first term back.
I also produced key poses that will help me develop my posing. Each pose can express a story and I want to use this as practice before each animating session I have during this term. These are the poses I made over the summer.
From Animdojo, I was able to learn new techniques as well as have my work be reviewed. On Fridays, I am able to upload an animation on SyncSketch and could have the work reviewed on AnimDojo. I found this very helpful as it outlined what I needed to work on such as lip sync and facial expressions.