Friday 11 April 2014

Major Project: Personal [Pre Production] (Body Mechanics)

The other half of my Major Project is a personal project. For this I am covering body mechanics and a duel dialogue piece. For body mechanics I wanted to animate a vanilla run cycle as I have not done one before and I think its a useful thing to be good at and know how to do comfortably.
Here are the thumbs and animatics for the run cycle:



The second part of body mechanics I wanted to do something different. A lot of people I have seen animate a jump or some sort of parkour/ free running. One of my tutors suggested something dace or something similar. When I was younger I used to do dance and gymnastics so the idea interested me. After some research I decided I didnt have enough time to fit in a dace routine (all body mechanics work should add up to 10 seconds of animation) so I decided on animating a gymnastics trick.
I researched a lot of gymnastics routines and studied their jumps and tricks. I made thumbnails of my favorites and made them into animatics to see which of them I liked best and which would be challenging but not impossible for my first try.

Here are the thumbs and animatics for my first ideas:







 I eventually decided on 5 as there was a lot going on and it looked interesting, yet still didnt take up much time. I am excited to start animating this one because of the really nice curves the body makes.

Here are the final thumbs and animatics for my gymnastics:





I was happy with how this animatic turned out. It was very difficult because the actions happen very quickly so I ended up doing a new drawing every couple of key frames. This was good though because I now have a better idea as for how to go about animating this in Maya. I think blocking will take a long time, but if i get that bang on, there shouldnt be too many major problems when in spline.

I think this will be fun once I get int maya, my only concern is finding a rig that will be able to hit the poses necessary for my gymnastics animation. I will have to do some research and testing because I think I will need one with IK FK switches on both hands and feet.

I am especially looking forward to they gymnastics part of this project because personally I havent seen a similar thing done much before and I think it will stand out ( if I manage to animate it well that is) Its also something different for me to sink my teeth into which will be fun.

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