Animation

This year in animation, we learned how to model and animate in 3D. We used software such as Maya, ZBrush, and Substance Painter to create and animate our characters. For our final project, we collaborated with 2-3 other animators to create the SR Narrative Animation.

3D Character Bio

This is my character and his character bio. After I finished creating his model, I took this screenshot in Substance Painter, where I could adjust the background, lighting, and other effects to show off the beauty of my model.

Walk, Run & Jump

Next, I animated a few basic animation cycles: walking, running, and jumping. Because this is 3D animation, I didn’t have to key each individual frame, but only set his extreme poses, letting the computer do the in-betweens. Since these are cycles, I only had to animate each step or jump once, and then repeat it.

Lip Sync

I would say that this practice animation was the most difficult and tedious. For the lip sync animation, I had to cut a mouth into my character’s face, and then create a bunch of different copies of my character with different mouth or eye shapes. After creating all those models, I then use the shape editor to combine all these models back into one, and adjust sliders to make my character’s face more like one mouth shape or another. Finally, after keying the sliders, I ended up with this lip sync animation.

Animatic

Before we started animating the narrative animation, we first created an animatic. The animatic lines out everything that’s going to happen and all the motions that need to be animated. It serves as a visual representation of how the final animation will look like and its pacing. It also helped us to decide how to split scenes and work.

Narrative Animation

Our final narrative animation is about Donnie, Cranberry, and Aster surprising Dragon on his birthday, and experiencing a few bumps along the way.

Reflection

Overall, this project was really fun. Getting to create any character we wanted and bringing them to life through animation was really amazing. It was also a lot of fun to work with others and collaborate on a bigger project at the end. I’m hoping to use these skills more in the future, continuing to learn more as I continue my education and maybe even into my career.