Monday, January 30, 2012

PSYCHOLOGY OF BODY MECHANICS

So term 2 for animation mentor brings us body mechanics.They haven't touched on the psychology of it yet, but maybe they'll do it later on in the term.
Weeks 1-4 was all about choosing one little piece of animation and polishing the heck out of it. We started simple with a ball on legs. So we didn't forget all the ball principles learned from last term.

Week 1 was to pick an option from a list (I chose a roundhouse side kick), planning it out with thumb nailing and video reference.
Week 2 was about blocking it out in Maya. Like drawings on paper we had to pose out each key drawing, then go back over it and set up break downs. It's at this stage that anticipation, squash and stretch, and overlapping action has to be built into it. By far the most meaty amount of work is in this second stage.
Week 3 was all about moving inbetweens... commonly known as splining. I like to keep with the traditional terminology because the pencil and the computer is only a tool which could quite possibly be superseded before I retire. So splining could become redundant in animation whereas inbetweens will always be there. So emphasis was on favouring a key frame, whether the head lead the action, or the head followed the action.
Week 4 was split into 2 sections. Firstly we had to finish off any changes our mentor has suggested and then plan another shot by choosing an action from a list, shooting video reference and thumb nailing it.
So 4 weeks to do 100 frames of animation... pretty luxurious. But it's all about getting the basics right at the start.
So our mentor Ray Ross has asked us not to do anything extra with light, textures and props. So striped down to the basics this term.