Release. Pressure. Animate.

Recommendations

Info

mentioned silhouette mode. Often it made me positioning the legs and arms in such a way that they would overlap less in silhouette. In the end result you can still sometimes see this and it adds to the readability of the poses, which is extremely important with such fast motion as in Mac „n‟ Cheese (2011). I feel that these changes made because of the usage of these tools were always a personal choice and improvement. It just showed us flaws or lacking poses in the overall sequence which allowed us to pinpoint better what needed improvement. Therefore this changed the overall animation for the better while staying true to our own style choices. The use of the aniPlacement tool, which has not been used often throughout the production, did introduce me with big changes in plans and ideas I‟ve had for shots. It allowed me to think out of the box as if anything would be possible to create. This made me feel less limited and it felt good to allow such freedom in thinking and posing. This introduced me often with more exaggerated and less dull movement while creating it. These shots all ended up working extremely well, but it‟s hard for me to see or pinpoint whether the aniPlacement has had that much of an influence on the overall style. Since it introduced me with totally new ideas and made me end up with different (better) animation I would say it improved the overall animation and the look of it for the better. Although many tools influenced how we approached things or how we tweaked the motion we would always tweak and work so long on a shot that the impact of the tools diminishes to very small – if even noticeable – differences in style choices. Also since we were constantly providing comments on each other‟s animation and tweaked our animation based on those guidelines the actual influence coming from how we posed or worked with the characters became much less as we started working towards what we actually thought would look best. Therefore I feel it indeed closely resembles an animation style and feel that we intended to create, with or without the toolset. It‟s just that with the toolset we felt more comfortable and efficiently creating the animation it has become. 5. Stress testing the toolset 1 4 4
Conclusion The main focus of my research was to find the answer on how 3D Animation software could be improved by creating a higher chance rate for holding a creative flow, increasing the productivity and intuitivity. This was coming from the understanding and pure feeling that I love animating, but have been unable to creatively fully enjoy the immersion of myself in the character and his means of movement while animating in 3D software. My personal hypothesis was this could be done by changing the way 3D animation software works by creating a customized toolset, thus my research was focused around that. Through most of my research – where the biggest part is a field study involving interviews and checking how people animate – I‟ve found that there‟s still a lot that can be improved in 3D animation software, but even more in the pipeline of smaller studios, towards a smoother interaction with the user with the goal to increase creative flow. I‟ve found that there are two sides to the story. There‟s the direct character manipulation, the control of the character and its keys the animator has to deal with just to be able to animate. And there‟s the production management, logging, notations, reviewing and production streamlining. I‟ve always felt that the first, the way of controlling the character, the Maya setup and the way this part works really is what was breaking my flow while animating. That‟s why I initially started off with this idea and the development of these concepts for Mac „n‟ Cheese. I had been searching, researching and evolving into a sort micro-management of developing. Looking for small fixes at first, developing tools that sped up the small things you often (daily) do in animating as an animator. It definitely worked and even these micro-management types of functions that ended up in the toolset were quite a significant change in „our lives as animators.‟ Things went faster in general, so speed was influenced. Also the character, the posing and the actual act of animating got more focus. So it‟s certainly to say this worked. The developed and beta tested toolset seems to help with focus and flow, though as found through this research it is just the tip of the iceberg. There‟s so much more to streamline in student or small studio productions. And through the answers from other studios (especially from out of the 3D sector) I‟ve found that structure in the pipeline is what I as animator have often been in conflict with. The fact that the animator in a student project or small studio often deals with data wrangling, supervising some of the story, checking shot‟s composition, its continuity in the edit and even doing the editing himself is just as much or even more part of breaking the flow in the act of animating than the technicalities involved with the character posing and handling. If an animator in a small studio is dealing with a lot of other stuff besides animation, it‟s best to keep what he does separated by fully completing the things before and don‟t be interfered with the other things - that could also be done afterwards - while Conclusion 1 4 5
Page 1 and 2:
PRESSURE. RELEASE. ANIMATE. How to
Page 3 and 4:
“Art challenges technology. Techn
Page 5 and 6:
Table of Contents Table of Contents
Page 7 and 8:
Introduction Not a very long time a
Page 9 and 10:
This is all evolving around the mai
Page 11 and 12:
There are two difficulties in discu
Page 13 and 14:
1.2 How can a flow be maintained or
Page 15 and 16:
this piece of art - posing the char
Page 17 and 18:
You know that feeling when you watc
Page 19 and 20:
without any reference or sketching.
Page 21 and 22:
2.1 Animating like a puppeteer. (St
Page 23 and 24:
ond with the character often create
Page 25 and 26:
everything done smoothly at the mom
Page 27 and 28:
same, hence a „tick‟ of the lig
Page 29 and 30:
This paragraph is about what in gen
Page 31 and 32:
“Too much action spoils the actin
Page 33 and 34:
working clean and keeping your head
Page 35 and 36:
think in the ways of those strong p
Page 37 and 38:
the motion and action of the charac
Page 39 and 40:
this can be a reliable way for „i
Page 41 and 42:
It‟s hard to have a clear distinc
Page 43 and 44:
the background. Any distraction at
Page 45 and 46:
or the mixed approach as described
Page 47 and 48:
customizing and tweaking the whole
Page 49 and 50:
as the character parts don‟t actu
Page 51 and 52:
As with traditional animation and m
Page 53 and 54:
example you could divide the pipeli
Page 55 and 56:
ecognizable style on its own, but f
Page 57 and 58:
issue. “While early production mo
Page 59 and 60:
There‟s a need for a strict goal
Page 61 and 62:
Simplicity is what animators seem t
Page 63 and 64:
Simple thinking Complex effects Ful
Page 65 and 66:
creating a thorough plan that doesn
Page 67 and 68:
Because using the early computer sy
Page 69 and 70:
work you‟re looking at, regardles
Page 71 and 72:
we‟ll see. According to a job des
Page 73 and 74:
day polishing splines, arcs and spa
Page 75 and 76:
It‟s important to allow supervisi
Page 77 and 78:
doesn‟t. For him they were mainly
Page 79 and 80:
- Discuss with supervisor. - Animat
Page 81 and 82:
the animator (like reviews by the s
Page 83 and 84:
By now I‟ve presented the importa
Page 85 and 86:
the final movie too. They might see
Page 87 and 88:
progression of the shot before star
Page 89 and 90:
In management I‟ve noticed while
Page 91 and 92:
already know exactly what pose happ
Page 93 and 94:
(Autodesk Whitepaper - The New Art
Page 95 and 96:
with a limited amount of informatio
Page 97 and 98:
information to be (possibly) presen
Page 99 and 100: for. Sometimes it is necessary to a
Page 101 and 102: pop out is simplicity. For every ta
Page 103 and 104: goals (based off of storyboard and
Page 105 and 106: up and shut it down instead of a co
Page 107 and 108: development 22 . Since the tracking
Page 109 and 110: The same accounts for playing the a
Page 111 and 112: animation studios, and if it were u
Page 113 and 114: on it, as well as use it automatica
Page 115 and 116: offer functionality for this in a r
Page 117 and 118: guessing right away what the best t
Page 119 and 120: to focus on only these parts and ma
Page 121 and 122: een developed through the years for
Page 123 and 124: data to handle through the years se
Page 125 and 126: applying it to your objects animati
Page 127 and 128: allows you to quickly sculpt tweaks
Page 129 and 130: quickly and easily check your anima
Page 131 and 132: without worrying about what and whe
Page 133 and 134: viewing and commenting accordingly
Page 135 and 136: stimulation might interfere with ac
Page 137 and 138: A picture depicting an overview of
Page 139 and 140: of the animating) could need this t
Page 141 and 142: tools that really helped with the c
Page 143 and 144: never really ended up using it as f
Page 145 and 146: But looking at the character from t
Page 147 and 148: otate around his head took me at mo
Page 149: As stated we worked faster and were
Page 153 and 154: management, start using it and twea
Page 155 and 156: Reference Sources Animation Mentor
Page 157 and 158: Hoffman, Hans; T. Weeks, Sara; H. H
Page 159 and 160: 1. Workflow and Pipeline clarificat
show all

Release. Pressure. Animate.

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?