ADVANCED ANIMATION - PROJECT 1
14.05.2020 - 11.06.2020 (Week 5 - Week 9)
Helen Angelia (0336203)
Advanced Animation
Project 1 - Flour Sack
Module Information Booklet (MIB)
Week 5
Week 5
By this week, we were already briefed about what we are going to do for our first project, which is making an animation from a flour sack. Mr. Kannan provided us the flour sack model with controls and everything already attached there, so we just had to move it around and press some keyframes. The lecturer did a short demo on how to animate the flour sack and told us to come up with a theme or storyboard.
Week 6
For my theme, I had chosen to make a simple animation of the flour sack which follows the beat and music from a famous song called "Bad Guy" by Billie Eilish and showed it to Mr. Kannan. I only made it for about 10 seconds of animation and back then, I had not known how to put music or audio in Maya, so I rendered quite a lot to determine the beat of the music.
Mr. Kannan said my flour sack is too stiff and only move in place. In moving an object, the hips also have to move. The lecturer likes the music and the beat, but I should add more movements like maybe slide into the left and right, and maybe at the end, the flour fell into a hole and die, lol so tragic.
I then thought about making the flour sack walking. Since we need to find a scene of a character, I plan to use Gru from Despicable Me, because his walk cycle and characteristic are interesting.
Week 7
For the next class, I only showed Mr. Kannan an additional part of the dancing flour sack, which is jumping. He then suggested me to do more and be more creative. I'm free to do anything with it, but make it longer.
I asked if the jumping is already okay and he said yes.
Week 8
I was still trying to do the walk cycle as I was having difficulties with it, and Mr. Kannan said I should make it move in one place first then move the flour sack position. I wasn't quite sure what he meant but I tried to test it out and do it myself first and when I had done it, it all becomes clear to me.
Even though we were still working on our first project, Mr. Kannan briefed us a bit about the second project so that we could be prepared. He told us to choose and search for any movie or film scene minimum 30 seconds and that we should act it out and record ourselves and of course show it to the lecturer later.
Week 9
Mr. Kannan said there are some blurry parts in my animation. He wants me to film it with Maya camera and capture Playblast, then I had to import it to Adobe Premiere Pro. The repetitive movements were also very visible. This could be a bit bothering because why would the audience want to watch if it is repetitive scenes. The cutting and editing scenes should also be revised. I have to put more rhythm, so everything could come together harmoniously.
I actually had repetitive scenes because firstly, the "Bad Guy" song is quite random and dark song, so I tried to make it as random as possible. Secondly, the walk cycle was very time-consuming as it was still quite hard for me to work on and I had to use the previous actions I have made.
Still, I listened to Mr. Kannan's advice and tried not to repeat the same mistake again for the next project. I did what Mr. Kannan suggested to me what to do for the revision and I remembered Mr. Mike's lecture in Film Studies and Cinematography class last semester, that camera shots are important. I need to think outside the box and experiment in finding the best angle to take the best and dynamic shot of the scenes.
Flour Sack Scenes Take Process
Here is my final outcome of flour sack animation:
REFLECTIONS
EXPERIENCES
It was honestly really fun in doing the flour sack. I enjoyed making it because I made the animation based on one of my favorite music and I love how I made the awkward, quirky, and funny movements of the flour. I showed it to my friends and family to know how their feedback is and they seem to be entertained when watching the final outcome of the animation. And it really pleased me, even though there were still some obvious mistakes in it.
OBSERVATIONS
I showed it to my older brother and he was even curious about how the outcome would be like. He also commented that the repetitive movements are very obvious and he made fun of me because of that, saying I'm still pretty bad at animating 3D. But I was not mad about it, I even appreciate his feedback and it triggers me to improve more. If a normal audience (non-animator) can see the mistake in animation, then I should change it and make it better in the future.
FINDINGS
I really learned more and a lot in this project. Mr. Kannan could not help me that much in Microsoft Teams because there was a problem with Request Controls. So he only guided me through telling me feedbacks and showing YouTube tutorials I could learn from. But that was good enough for me as I found many interesting and new stuffs I never knew and I thanked him for that.
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