Another Big Hero 6 Study... Last One!

Okay, so I know I've done so much Big Hero 6 study. This is the last one, I saw a really cool weight shift and natural looking movement that I wanted to try and copy.

So I was going for a direct copy. I liked how he shifts his weight from one side to another. In the time-lapse you'll see that I scale up his hands, it was only to account for the gloves Hiro wears in the movie. Also this is the first time I've animated eyes, I wasn't sure what exactly to do. I figured eyes don't really slow-in/slow-out, so I made them dart and put it into linear.

The reference is from this lovely scene. I also had to account for the fact that Hiro in the movie is standing on something that isn't flat, but it's pretty close.

The head is a bit snappy and the arms need some overlap. Maybe I'll add those later. The things you notice after you upload!

What I Learned
The biggest takeaway from this is to break up movement. At one point I delete keys because I confused myself and added so many. One thing I learned is the you can find your poses and key those in, then adjust timing and offsetting afterwards.
I'm also teaching myself facial animation right now, just started with the eyes. So any tips on that would be awesome.

The time-lapse is three different recordings. I started one at my coffee table, so that's why the ratio is 16x10. The last recording is on my Cintiq screen so that one is at 16x9.

Big Hero 6 Animation Study Part 2!

Another study early this week, I won't do any more studies until my next assignment is completely finished. I feel like I've learned a lot from these and I'll keep doing them, but I want to apply what I've learned to my assignment now.

My study is from Big Hero 6 again, here's my final video:

I wanted to do a stillness study. What happens in animation when someone is more or less still. The arm rotation really stood out but what else goes on?

Not much apparently, mostly just offsetting keys... But here's the reference I used!

Mostly what happens on the still part of the shot is arm movement. I also made his torso straighten and uncompress from the previous poses, but that doesn't take long. Something else that I started implementing was something my mentor Jon said about rotating arms, don't just move around the rotation selection in all axis, it could cause some problems. The problems can be fixed, but they're a pain. So going forward I've been trying to use a specific axis on the rotation handle. Another big thing I learned is to look at your curves. At one point while animating there were some weird looking movements. I figured to check in the graph editor and there it was! Weird curve problems.

Here's the time-lapse video of the animation process. It took around 42 minutes to finish but the video is sped up to be around 15 minutes. I hope you enjoy and learn something!


I won't post for a little while while I focus on animating my own scene, so see you next week!

Also, here's the .mb file and the eleven rig download: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B01q5eoTgo3ZQVUyYmxXNGtmMlE Extract the eleven rig and open the .mb file, when it tells you to relocate the rig go to: ElevenRig_v1.2/Scenes/ElevenRig_V1.2.ma

Big Hero 6 Animation Study

I've been having a lot of trouble with my current assignment. The weight hasn't felt as great as I want it to, and the character doesn't seem to feel alive. So I decided to do a weight study this week. I downloaded some new rigs and really wanted to try it out, so here it is!

So here's the study and what I've learned from it!

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It's not perfect at all, I don't think I'll fix it just because it was supposed to be an in-the-moment study. It still feels a little floaty, the landing after hitting the wall doesn't feel quite right and something about the kick still doesn't feel right, and I should have made the arc nicer on the last step of the run and I should have fixed that floaty animation in the end. But enough with the bad, let's go over what I learned!

Here's the reference I followed. In case you don't already know, it's from Disney's Big Hero 6. I chose this one because it's a full body shot and it was easy to follow because the camera move is so general.

So let's examine my animation from the beginning forward. I won't go over the running sequence in the beginning because it's so short and basic, so I'll start right when he jumps into the wall. The text will be above the picture that I'm going over, just to clear that up now.

He comes down from the apex of his last step and crouches pretty low and leans forward into an off-balance pose. The weight at this point is pulling him forward and he's preparing to slam into the wall, so he brings his arms forward.
His screen left arm is the first to contact, you'll notice his foot isn't rolling like it should be... I actually just noticed that. But it happens pretty quick so it's not too big of a deal. I could have pushed this pose further, he's kind of just a straight line as far as his line of action goes, but it's kind of an in-between pose of two extremes.

Here he's completely contacting the wall, it happens I think two or three frames after the last picture. He does cushion himself with his screen left arm so that he doesn't hurt himself so it's not a SMACK kind of hit. His screen right foot/leg bounces off of the wall, that was really fun to animate, as well as his screen right arm sort of slapping the wall.

After the slam against the wall, he lands in a semi-crouched position. He really absorbs the weight into his feet. And he holds that absorption for his step back and just into the jump.

Here he is at the top of his jump, this part took the longest. I played around with him jumping straight up and a little bit back, but it kept looking horrible. So I made him jump toward the wall, very slightly, and brought his arms all the way up, following my reference.

As he kicks, his arms come to his side and he falls onto his screen right foot again. It took a little while adjusting my curves to get him to look like he gets pushed by his leg. But the reference was there, so it didn't take too long.

Here are the last three, the hops. His arms were really fun to animate in that circular motion. The foot placements took forever, but I realized they're KEY to making this animation look lifelike. Without realistic foot movements, the animation would have no life at all.

So, I learned with this assignment that it's really helpful to have clean curves, delete all of those extra keys that play no role. Move out the tangents to match what the keys were doing. It really helps the smoothness overall. Watch Victor Navone's Spline Tutorial for more information on clean splines.
Another thing I learned is that foot movement is an absolute necessity to realistic animation. People are constantly moving their feet around. They're always shuffling, just check it out next time you're in a public place.

I hope I could share any helpful tips, next test I do I'm going to record my screen and make a time-lapse or realtime video to upload here.

Here's an extra video I did of a new rig Animation Mentor released called Sarge!