For the animation narrative we worked in groups of 3 to create a short story using the characters we made during the previous unit. The Narrative 2 project is similar to the Narrative 1 project that we did in our junior year but using 3d modeling instead of drawing 2d characters. In my group, we had trouble at first coming up with what to do for our story because two of the characters were more sci-fi and space themed, while mine was a clown. We were eventually able to overcome this challenge by making the story about two people who crashed their ship on an unknown planet and asked the clown for help back.
3d character poses + bio + artist statement
For the walk, run, and jump animations we set keyframes to have the character be in certain positions at certain frames. An example of this would be having the character getting ready to jump for the first few frames, in the air at frame 8, then a few keyframes for them reaching the ground again. For this, we wouldn’t have a keyframe for every time they moved because the character will move from one position to the next even if the poses are 3 keyframes apart.
Something I really valued from the production of my Narrative 2 animation was using motion capture and figuring out what movements work with it and what doesn’t along with how to work around that problem. For example, we had a scene in our narrative when 2 of the characters land on the ground after crashing their ship but the sensors on the motion capture don’t work when you’re lying down. I noticed in the green room that the walls were the green screen is are curved and leaned against those to create a lying down effect which worked effectively in our animation.