Animation Project: Dialogue #01 - Part 3

 

 Animation Project - Dialogue #01

Part 3 - First Full Pass

April 2021

 This is the last progress report for this initial segment of animating a dialogue piece. After refining the mouth animations, I went ahead to animate the body movements and set up the camera. Since I purposefully split the dialogue into separate parts, I moved the camera as if they are connected scenes without being one single shot. Once synced up, I did my best to convey proper flow and rhythm to the overall animation. The rig I have used for this project is the Polly rig from NoisyChain on Turbosquid.

https://youtu.be/wThv1hLdfTk 

It was much easier to block out the body movements based on the reference video I shot, with multiple passes. I picked the most impactful poses and tried to replicate as close as possible. However, I did take liberties and also tried to accentuate the character 's movements in order to make the animation more dynamic. Sticking too close to the real-world proportions would dampen the readability of the scene. Once blocking was done, switching to spline and editing the in-betweens was not too tough. 

There were parts where it was difficult to pace the facial animation alongside the body motions so that the character was still relevant to the camera. I only wanted a stationary camera for this first dialogue piece, so no fancy movements from the viewpoint. This was meant to convey the audience as actual onlookers in the scene. 

Additionally, one of the hardest parts was not going too far with the body animation. Sometimes during the process, I found myself exaggerating the movements too much, and at the expense of the perspective I had already established. The character would turn too far or flow way too bouncy or stiff at times. Upon re-evaluation, I went back to fix as much as I could, but evidently some parts are still a bit much for the tone of the dialogue.

Overall, this has been a teaching moment for my journey with animating. I do not think this project turned out as I would have hoped, but at least I was able to reach an endpoint. I will leave this project alone for a little bit in order to focus on other things. I would like to return to this in time, but for now I think I need to put my mind elsewhere, so perhaps I can come back with new and fresh ideas. I feel that in order to improve, I would be better off restarting the whole process with a different strategy.

Rigging Project: Pigsy

 Rigging Project: Pigsy

April 2021

This is my latest project, the first of many hopefully leading to a fun final product. Pigsy is their name, and they are a sentient piggy-bank set to be the main star in my developing animated short. This is my first original character built from the ground up from conceptualization to fully rigged model.

This rig has full rotation capabilities in the body, head, and limbs. Movement in 3D space can be achieved with either the main body control, or the root control. The face has some more specific controls, such as a head tilt (in place of a neck), nose tilt, and one of my favorites: eyebrow movement and manipulation. Finally, the eyes are 2D grafted onto the model, made by an image sequence which can be toggled to display one of the many eye textures I have drawn up. There are also a few more specialized features intended to enhance the animated scenes to come.

As this is my first original character made from the ground up, I was hesitant to dive into the vast pipeline from modeling to rigging to animation, but by keeping my ambitions in check, I was fairly confident I could do it all on without having to compromise too much. I am happy to say I was able to accomplish what I set out to create almost exactly.

Making the armature for Pigsy didn't take too long, as I actually started building it as I modeled the character parts. Once I got to the actual rigging process, I ran through the process as I had envisioned and just observed what worked as intended and what didn't. The legs, body, and main head controls went together flawlessly. Meanwhile, with the help of a few tutorials, the eye texturing and eyebrow controls turned out alright as well. 

 

 

The only real point trouble was the eyebrow manipulators, as I wanted the easiest way to get clean deformation without too complex a rigging system. The solution was lattice deformation, which turned out to be exactly what I was looking for. With one control on each end of each eyebrow, I can squash and stretch to just about any extreme, which should prove very useful for expressions in animation. I am very proud and excited to see what I can do with such a feature.

This rig was a nice challenge to have as my first original character. On one hand, I had a clear vision of what I wanted the character to be capable of. On the other hand, there were obvious tasks I would have to face and problem solve for. The finished product has just about all I had hoped for. 

I began development of my first original character and soon-to-be short animation a little over a month ago, and this is one of the largest steps so far. This is the first result of my labors. I hope to push forward and begin animation and scene building next, but before that, I must begin production of additional assets and other necessary materials. Luckily, the main model here is out of the way, so the process will be a bit less stressful in the days to come.

Modeling Project: Pigsy

 Modeling Project: Pigsy

March 2021

This is my latest project, the first of many hopefully leading to a fun final product. Pigsy is their name, and they are a sentient piggy-bank set to be the main star in my developing animated short. This is my first original character built from the ground up from conceptualization to fully rigged model.

This model is a modular build, consisting of only a few simple shapes. My goal is to have it fully rigged for animation, with a list of capabilities all my own in mind. Of the many individual shapes, the main components are the body, head, legs, and head accessories. 

 

The body, probably the easiest to make, is simply a rounded balloon-looking piece that I only needed to add a coin slot on the top and a nub for a tail on the upper back end. The head was a fun task, as it really helped me understand what subdivision surface modeling could do. With only a few protrusions from a simple sphere, I was able to get the basic shape of the ears. With only a few rounds of trial and error, a simple subdivision and polishing of the polygons got me to right where I wanted to be.

The legs were a piece I wanted to be as simple as possible. I wanted the overall model to be as close to a real-life piggy bank with cartoon proportions as possible. Seeing as some piggy banks don't even have separated feet components, I opted for an easy and simple design of a barrel-like structure. I personally found the shape to be aesthetically pleasing, and it fit in the other parts of the model. After completion, I duplicated and spread out four of the limbs.

The rest of the pieces were easy to achieve with simple tweaks to primitives. The eyebrows are elongated spheres, the nose and nose barrel come from cylinders. With a few fixes to the geometry, all came together very nicely, with reasonable topology.

 

Overall , there weren't many hardships as far as modeling is concerned. I took a few liberties translating my concept art to the 3D silhouette, but overall the model is optimized as best it can be for what I am aiming for in rigging and animation down the line. Next up comes rigging, and beyond that more asset modeling and animation.