3D Character Poses Bio
Chaad is a chihuahua. He might look intimidating for some people because of his size (he’s 6ft tall) and the scar on his chest, but he is actually a very soft chihuahua who loves strawberries a lot. He had a heart surgery when he was 3 months old, that’s why he has a scar on his chest. He wishes to make some friends and eat strawberry ice cream with them some day. Chaad also enjoys learning K-pop dances in his free time.
3D Character Animation – Walk, Run, Jump
To make Chaad walk, run, and jump, I used keyframe animation. Keyframe animation is a way to animate characters. I adjusted how I wanted my character to look like on at least the 1st, 6th, 12th, 36th, and 24th keyframes. Then the computer will calculate what other frames that I did not keyframe should look like. However, to make the animation look more natural, I also added some extra keyframes to make my character not look so stiff.
3D Character Animation – Motion Capture
Motion capture, or mocap, animation is different from keyframe animation. With mocap, we have animated skeletons to put on our characters. Then the character “wears” the skeleton to be able to move. But I also had to adjust my Chaad movements. so his hands would not be in his belly in some parts.
3D Character Animation – Lip Sync
To make Chaad talk, I first made the basic lip shapes such as “ah”, “eh”, “ee”, “o”, and “oo” and combined all the lip shapes to one model. Then I used the shape editor and listen to the audio to know what lip shape my character should have at a specific moment.
Action Reaction Animation
The Action Reaction Project is a pretty big project in this class because students are asked to implement everything we have learned about 3D animation and create a short story. I first created some expressions of Chaad and the environment. And then I used keyframe animation to make Chaad move. Finally, I edited the video and added some details/effects in After Effects.
Hope you enjoy watching this short animation! You can watch Poppy’s (Chaad’s best friend) story on VictoriaL’s webpage 🙂
Reflection
During this unit, I valued a lot of self-challenging. I have never learned or experimented with 3D animation before, but I also have had a passion for it. I didn’t want to just make something that is mediocre in my opinion. I tried to go beyond my limits and take risks because I think that is a good way to improve faster. I really enjoyed learning from this unit. These animation skills I learned allowed me to explore something that I could not explore before joining freestyle. And I got to create a short 3D animation, which I never thought of doing!