My Crtical Analysis of 'Mongoose's Present'

One thing I felt pleased with in my animation was the movements of the snake model. I feel this turned out well because I made the rig and model very simple and this in turn made it easy to texture well and animate.

Reflecting on how the mongoose turned out, in my opinion, I would have liked the textures to have turned out as good as the snake's textures did. The eyelids turned out a lot better than I imagined as I had to learn quite a lot of new things in Maya to create them efficiently. The Blend Shapes I feel should have had more expression in them to give my mongoose more character. I also realised that the mongoose is modelled a bit wrong around the feet, which I couldn’t fix as I was too far into the animation project, but in future I would have to remember that animal legs work slightly different to human legs.

The scenery in my animation was made very quickly and although it looked the way I wanted it to (like a grassland in South Africa), I could have improved it to make it look better. The ground looks a bit plain towards where the horizon line is and the mountains are not really detailed enough. However the pain effects were quite effective, but it might have been better if I had created my own foliage to make the scene look more like how I wanted it to. I also could have improved the lighting of the scene, as it was a bit dark in some places.

For the animation itself I deviated from the storyboard and ended up with a better ending. Whilst I tried to convey lots of emotion from the mongoose, I think I partially succeeded. I could have definitely improved my animation in this area however, by adding more subtle movements to both the snake and the mongoose to convey their emotions a bit more. The animation as a whole also could have been slowed down as the camera and characters move a bit too fast. 

Technical Summary of 'Mongoose's Present'

First of when starting this animation project, I researched what mongooses look like and the kind of facial expressions that the mongoose will have for the animation. I researched the proud emotion the most as that was the emotion that was the main focus in the animation. I made the mongoose look tall by giving him a long body to reflect this. When I finished modelling, I made Blend Shapes so that I can change the mongoose’s facial expressions.

When the mongoose was fully rigged, I created the eyes. The eyelids were created from two NURB spheres and have driven keys set to them so that they can be opened and closed. These were then parented to the controls I created using the CV curve tool so I could change them using these controls. The eyes were then parented to the head joint so that the eyes would stay in place when the mongoose moves.

The snake has a simple rig and is actually two models, one before swallowing the box and one after. The box itself has a Blend Shape which determines if it is open or closed. For the scenery of the animation, the trees and grass were quite simply some paint effects already on Maya, and the ground was a plane with a bump map added to it. The sky and background were made from a sphere which was then textured.  Finally, I animated the characters just by key framing and using the controls I had made for the models. I used two cameras which were the main camera and the snake camera.  

For further detail of the technical side of things, check out earlier posts:

• Creating the snake
• Finishing the mongoose and the mongoose's Blend Shapes
• The scenery

The Finished Animation

Yup, I finally finished the animation. Here it is, enjoy! :D

 

Next I will be putting up the technical summary and the critical analysis (stuff I need to upload to be marked).

Scenery and Stress

Well today I realised that the mongoose is modelled a bit wrong around the feet. Can't really fix that now I'm so far into the animation, so I'll have to make do. I added sme IK handles to the legs to enable me to move them easier whilst animating. Also I have done the background setting for the animation. The trees and grass were quite simply some paint effects already on Maya, and the ground was a plane with a bump map added to it. If I have time at the end of the project, I will improve the background as it looks a bit plain towards where the horizon line is.

Finishing the mongoose and the mongoose's blend shapes!

I recently finished my mongoose model. Fully textured and rigged with some BlendShapes. What I didn't explain last time was how I did the eyelids and the eyes. The eyelids were created from two NURB spheres and have driven keys set to them so that they can be opened and closed. These were then parented to the controls I created using the CV curve tool so I could change them using these controls. They also have limits set on them so that I can't accidentally rotate or scale the eyelid or open the eyelid too wide. The eyeballs are also parented to controls so that they can be moved with one control, making my life easier.

The mongoose texture was some simple colouring in Adobe Photoshop with a filter added just like the snake. However, to get the furry looking texture of the mongoose I found a free fur texture online on this website: (http://seamlesstextures.org/2010/05/fur/).

The BlendShapes were made by duplicating the basic model of the mongoose, and then edited to have different facial expressions. These models would then be made BlendShapes of the main mongoose model and by clicking the BlendShapes in the Channel Box I can change the mongoose's expression to that of the BlendShape of my choosing. This means it will be a lot easier for me to give the mongoose different expressions once I had rigged the main model. The BlendShape models are also on a different layer so that they can be hidden whilst rendering.

Reflecting on how the model turned out, in my opinion, I would have liked the mongoose's textures to have turned out as good as the snake's textures did. The eyelids turned out a lot better than I imagined as I had no idea how I would do the eyelids when I had started on the model. The BlendShapes I feel are okay, but I need to make more facial expressions and make them more expressive to give my mongoose more character.

Creating the snake

I decided to do things in a slightly different order and actually I went and completely finished modelling, rigging and texturing the snake. I have also slightly changed the ending of my animation. What will happen is that the snake will lunge at the mongoose and eat the box it jumped out of.

The snake was a lot easier to do than the mongoose, perhaps because it was a much more simpler character. I didn't have to paint the skin weights nearly as much and the UVs for texturing the snake were easier to sort out. I  decided not to create a bump map for the snake's scales. However if I have time left after finishing the blend shapes and the animating, I may add a bump map to improve the snake's look.

Next time I should move back on to finishing the BlendShapes for the mongoose and explain how I did them. Also, I am currently in the process of re-texturing the mongoose, as the snake turned out much better and there's a bit of a quality difference so that's why I haven't shown the mongoose and it's texture this time.

Mongoose Rigged

I've rigged the mongoose! I've put in the joints and painted the skin weights so the joints work as they should. I have started to make the BlendShapes as well which will change the expressions of the mongoose. Next up when I've finished all the different facial expressions will be the creation of the snake model, the backdrop and then it will be texturing and then finally animating. Next time I'll go more into detail about the BlendShapes and stuff.

Modelling the Mongoose

I'm a bit behind schedule and I haven't posted a blog post in ages but the animation is still underway and I am in the process of modelling the mongoose. Soon I will add Blend Shapes to the mongoose so that it can have multiple facial expressions on the same model easily. I will go more into detail on that part when I have finished the mongoose. I have almost finished the body, just need to work on the paws, tail and eyes/eyeballs.

Rocket animation (Week 4 - 6) - The animation!

I finished the animation from a Maya scene given on Maya, where the models were already completed and textured. The lighting were also already made. I took into account the research and tried to give the rocket an irritated look. The rocket was already rigged but I put an IK handle on the 'leg' of the rocket so I could move it up and down easier.

I feel as an improvement I could have put more character into the rocket and some parts of the animation, particularly the part where the rocket looks at the green light, could have been made slower. Anyway, here it is:

Let me know what you think!

Rocket animation (Week 4 - 6) - Research and Storyboard

I decided to go home over last week to concentrate on my work. There's no internet connection at my parents' house so I didn't manage to update last week but now I have an animation to show you!

We were set a task in class to animate a rocket conveying a certain emotion that we had to choose out of seven. I decided to choose an angry emotion for the rocket, but instead of the rocket appearing openly angry, I wanted to do something subtle and have the rocket be more of an irritated type of angry.

First of all, the smart thing to do would be to research irritated characters. The first character that came to mind was Donald Duck, who frequently gets angry and stressed.

You can tell from this image that Donald Duck is irritated because his fists are both clenched, his eyes are frowning and he is in an aggressive pose. His mouth is clenched shut and his arms are held back behind his body with his back turned towards whatever he is annoyed at. This shows that he is restraining and isn't full on mad, but more subtly irritated.

Another character I looked at was Squidward from the cartoon Spongebob Squarepants.

 
Squidward is a character that gets frequently irritated and annoyed, so he is a good character to look at. His hands are on his hips and his pose is a straight vertical line, making him look defiant. His facial expression with the half closed eyes, frowning mouth and one raised eyebrow shows that he is not impressed.

After researching irritated characters and the poses and body language which conveys how irritated they are, I created a storyboard for the animation of the rocket.

I could have probably improved this storyboard by showing more emotion in the rocket and perhaps more steps. The next post will be about the animation itself.

Final Character Designs

Well I finally completed the final designs for both the snake and mongoose characters. I decided to give the characters a relatively simple design each due to the humour of the animation and also to make the modelling process simpler and faster so that I can concentrate on the animating. Now I can finally start modelling the characters!

Also in the last lab we had for the Advanced Character Animation, we were assigned a new animation that we had to complete about a rocket. I will post about that soon.

Updated storyboard

Well I updated the storyboard by putting more actions in. Here it is:

I probably would have benefitted putting even more actions in though. The drawings are a bit inconsistent too and that annoys me, but as it is only the storyboard I shouldn't be spending too much time on it. I will be posting the final character designs of the mongoose and the snake very soon so stay tuned.

Storyboard!

Well I have done a storyboard for my animation for the Advanced Character Animation module.

Basically what's happening here is that the mongoose opens a box that is addressed to it. It is actually a trick by the snake, which jumps out to suprise the mongoose. The mongoose knocks out the snake with one punch and the animation ends with the mongoose looking proud of himself. Later on I will add the character designs of both the mongoose and the snake. These designs will be used as references when modelling the characters.

First post, and first animations

This is my first post so first of all welcome. I am currently learning animation in Maya so that I can eventually produce animations of awesome and hopefully get a job, preferably in the video games industry.

Today I managed to complete these two animations and posted them on Youtube. I didn't make the models myself they were provided by the uni's Blackboard. They're pretty simple, but it's important to learn and refine the basics. The first one is supposed to be a light ball and a heavy ball but I really don't like how it turned out at all. I think the lighter ball might be too floaty. The second one is a waving hand, which I think turned out a bit jerky. Any criticism is appreciated.

This is an animation I made in my first year at uni. I really hate the lighting on this but it was my first proper full length animation.