Animation 102: Emotion to Emotion (Pose to Pose) MAYA and 2D

Feb 24, 2017

Our first maya animation task is as follows: Second exercise: 'Emotion to emotion' shall discuss: Body language Emotional transitions Pick two emotions act out as if two key poses Animation: Animate the transition of the pose to pose This is a video I've found from Alan Becker tutorials, who explains some of the finer details of pose to pose animation:

I have sketched out a plan for my pose to pose video: I have chose to animate Buckid from a sleeping position to a startled and then awake position.

Considering these key poses, I opened up Maya to animate Buckid into these positions. Initial set up of emotion to emotion: I firstly keyed in the initial poses and let the computer fill in the initial in between frames.

Secondly I added the principle of squash and stretch to the head, (setting the head to an extreme stretched pose at the top of its arc).

The initial started head turn was moving far to rapidly so I slowed it down to half of it's original speed:

The whole transition between the two motions still looked too robotic. I firstly set a very subtle ease to the start of the animation, to suggest that the character was breathing whilst he was unconscious. I decided that the arms were the main cause of what was making the movements look robotic. I added an additional third motion to the arms. Once they had risen up in the air, they now moved back down to the lower half of his torso before rising up again to show that he was still disorientated upon his awakening. The arms would then return to a relaxed position once he realised that he was awake and the coast was clear.

An additional frantic head turn, added a feeling of extra disorientation.

With my final version of this animation, I cleaned up the movements with easing on every movement. I was happy that with subtle swayings of the arms and body, the character appeared to be more human and have more personality.

I'm learning in these exercises to convey the emotions of a character, that the true personality comes out in the subtle nuanced motions. In order to effectively achieve these emotions it is always best to eliminate any chance of robotic movements, this comes in the follow through action and ensuring that there is no symmetrical action going on within the limbs. I then filmed this reference video to help me better understand the movements I wanted for my 2D animation of the same sequence:

I drew out a bar sheet from my reference video and got to work on animating in Adobe Flash.

I started off my 2D animation, rather naively, by trying to draw the frames using a straight ahead action approach, rather than the pose to pose we had be instructed to do. I learned quickly that this character was already beginning to lose it's proportions and that I would have to implement a more sensible pose to pose approach.

I drew out all of the initial poses I could see in the reference video and played them all out one after the other, without implementing any pauses:

To break up the animation, extended the hold of some of the frames to match up more with the reference video and bar sheet, this already improved the legibility of the animation and gives the audience a chance to comprehend the movement they are seeing.

I then took into consideration what my tutors had advised me of in my last animation. They recommended that I make my lines more consistent, Thus redrew over my frames not using a pressured tip on my Wacom tablet.

The final touch to this exercise was to try and match the 2D animation with the Maya one, by making the initial startled motion more rapid on the set off:

What I'm still not satisfied with in this animation is the form of the character and I am not a fan of the block lines. Upon review, my course leader also shared my views, the lines seem too flat and thus not provide any dynamism to the drawings. I shall have to bare this in mind when animating my next exercises. I shall have to study more dynamic drawing. It is all in the pressure applied to every 'brush stroke'.