For the Narrative 2 unit in animation, we used the characters we designed last semester and began to give these personality and story. This started with rigging and animating the characters to be able to do certain actions. Eventually, after we began building their characters through their movements, we made a group animation with a focus on story telling using all of our characters that we built and rigged.
Our characterization began with creating a story for our character. I came up with a name and told the basic story of Dennis Jenkins. I had this in mind when modeling his character, but as I wrote it some of his personality traits and dispositions became clear to me.
My first animations with the praying mantis were the walk, run, and jump cycles. These are basic animations that are always made for new characters. As I key framed his movements, I tried to keep in mind his personality. I also tried to incorporate some physical movements common to praying mantis, such as smaller steps and the way he holds his arms. Also, the jump is supposed to more or less mirror a real praying mantis jump.
My next project with Dennis was a lip sync animation. I chose the song “Life could be dream” because it is one of my favorite songs. Also, the happy, opportunistic lyrics and feelings the song creates summarize Dennises character: he looks scary but really he is a quiet and friendly guy who looks forward to the future. When animating the lip sync, I added head bopping and foot movement in rhythm with the song to make it more captivating. Although it was difficult to make the praying mantis mouth form human shapes to follow the song, I think it came out pretty well, and this is one of my favorite animations I have made.
I really valued being able to learn all these 3D animation techniques. It was so much fun to finally put them al together in the end, and I am really proud of our group and the story we were able to tell. Although the narrative progression not make complete sense, I think the characters we built had a lot of personality and the scenes we created were beautiful and interesting. Being able to 3D animate is really empowering and is a skill I am so grateful to have learned.