Animation 102: INTRO TO ARMATURES (Sit Down/ Stand Up Exercise)

Feb 6th, 2017 My first animation task for this semester involved a completeley new frontier within my stop motion animation experience... Armatures. We are creating animation tasks that involve a humanoid form, these armatures will allow us to implement character and personality within our animations, as well as understand how the human form articulates and moves. Brief Over view of first exercise: Starting off with a sit and a stand exercise Animation: Armature is at an airshow or watching an eagle taking flight Armature sat down, stands up looks up at airplane/eagle and then sits down again 25fps hold at start and end ​

Animation Reference: With our stand up/sit down animation task, I decided that filming a reference video would be the most effective in aiding my observation skills.

I took my reference video into adobe premier and mapped out the frames on my bar sheet:

This was super effective in aiding my timing. I consider this to be the first part of my observe, translate and animate routine. (Below: the armature I was to work with).

Once I was ready with my bar sheet, I was ready to animate, although I would have liked to have drawn out a storyboard first, unfortunately I had no time to do so, due to the time I had booked my animation kit out. This is something I wish to amend in next week's animation activity.

I set up my animation using the first frame from my reference video as a reference for my staging.

In the set up of my staging, it is important to note that the armatures are rigged up in a way so that one does not have to worry about balancing the actual metal skeleton every frame. This achieved by using high-powered magnets that are situated under the table. However that important fact is something I neglected in my first attempt at this animation.

I therefore had to try again once I realised that the legs were not staying in place and that I had made my task 100x harder by forgetting to use the magnets.

I reset my staging this time being sure to use the magnets situated underneath the table.

One piece of ingenuity did come to me when considering that I needed to make sure my prop, in this case the seat that the armature was to sit on would stay in place. I blue tacked a copper penny onto the bottom of the blocks and this ensured that when using a third magnet, as well as the two I had used previously, I had a rigid and immovable anchor to my additional prop.

This was how the set up looked from underneath the table:

Once I had that emplace, the process of animating the motion proved to be a lot less daunting than I was anticipating it to be. This was, in-part, thanks to the error I had made at the start of my animation, in my first attempt. I found myself being a lot more delicate with the armature, even though it was now attached to the magnets. Because of this delicacy I was able to concentrate and spot subtle follow through actions that were present in the reference footage. Quickly learned that by treating the rigging of the armature like an IF rig in Maya, it was easier to manipulate and articulate the figure in ways that made more sense. As you'll see in the footage below, I only got used to moving the armature properly towards the ned of the animation. The first movements are a bit too linear and clunky. It's only after the figure swings their body to the left of the screen, one can notice that my animation improves, in terms of Secondary action and follow through. I especially was pleased with the sit down motion, as I felt I was able to capture these subtle follow throughs there as well.

I look forward to hearing what Joe and Johny have to say about this animation. I have found my stop motion tasks to be far more enjoyable because of the character I can now put into the figures and the trials and errors I am now challenged with, in learning how to use these armatures. I will revisit this animation in the future of this module to see how far I have come with my comprehension of the armatures.