This week the referenced video will be modified to add some movement curves.
Perform debugging of Action Blocks to disassemble the actions.
This week’s female character animation has been tweaked to tweak the details and add some simple expression animations such as winking and smiling. But I haven’t studied this piece of content systematically, so I would like to ask Jiawei Chen for help!
Facial expression control and upper body movements with a new character this week. My choice is Pirates of the Caribbean I Captain Jack’s conversation with Vice Captain Gibbs about their ship being taken away.
Reference：
Line：
Captain Jack Sparrow: Mr Gibbs, any particular reason why my ship is gone?
Mr Gibbs: The ship? Were the ship. Jack ! The ship`s gone !
Captain Jack Sparrow: Really ?
Sketches：
For this week’s Character Animation Blocking on the female character, I started by posing for a video of myself and tweaking it in comparison.
Reference：
This week I have been reading a lot of literature on the relationship between ‘culture’ and ‘animation’.
Reference：
Lacroix, C., 2004. Images of animated others: The orientalization of Disney’s cartoon heroines from The Little Mermaid to The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Popular Communication, 2(4), pp.213-229.
van Rooij, M., 2019. Carefully constructed yet curiously real: How major American animation studios generate empathy through a shared style of character design. Animation, 14(3), pp.191-206.
Robinson, T., Callister, M., Magoffin, D. and Moore, J., 2007. The portrayal of older characters in Disney animated films. Journal of aging studies, 21(3), pp.203-213.
This week’s character animation has been tweaked based on feedback from last week.
Modified the waist power-ups, exaggerated them to show more of the character’s body movement, and curved the movement in some places to make it more natural.
This week’s male character animations have been tweaked to tweak the details and add some simple expression animations such as blinking, smiling etc. But I haven’t studied this piece of content systematically, so I would like to ask Jiawei Chen for help!
This week’s character animation, based on feedback from last week, has been tweaked to add new keyframes and speed up the coherence between some of the movements.
For this week’s Character Animation Blocking on the male characters, I started by posing for a video of myself and making adjustments in comparison.
Reference：
This week, in conjunction with Nigel’s feedback from last term, I changed the title of the topic to -Characterisation of body language in 3D animation.
I also wrote some outline about the thesis, asked a few questions and got some inspiration after the conversation with Nigel.
I deviated from the scope of the thesis that I had set before, ‘culture’, and I focused more on the behavioural aspects of animated characters this time, and I needed to make a major change to the thesis.
Building on last week’s work, make changes to the keyframes to add stepped movements based on George’s feedback. During the process, instead of having the character movement pattern tend to be in a straight line, it is an arc movement so that the character is more flexible and highlights the character tension.
Blocking the characters this week. adjusting the character keyframe positions and not too much K-framing based on the timings of the reference video.
This week I have been discussing feedback from last term’s dissertation with Nigel, listening to comments and looking for some dissertation literature on character body language, Nigel suggested that I look online for some design ideas from creative teams, and videos to study.
The new term begins with George talking about advanced body mechanics, performing with the body and mime forms, planning our shots and limiting single characters.
I made a video of myself and the idea came from Cat and Mouse. The character is resting on the couch and stretching out when a basketball comes crashing down and the character falls off the couch, very confused.
Here is the sketch
Here’s another idea of a man pushing against a wall, but not being able to push, and eventually pulling the wall away