Principles used:
- Squash and Stretch – The weight of the sphere when it comes into contact of the pillars
- Follow Through & Overlapping Action – the tail movement after the body has contacted the pillar. This creates a more realistic movement of the tail in relations to the body.
- Slow in and out – As the fox moves from one pilar to the other, there is a slow in and out like the bouncing ball animation had.
- Staging – I’ve added some eyes, pillars and back drop just to add to the environment and make the animation more playful.
- Pose to Pose – Like the bouncing ball the fox body would need to follow a similar path. The tail will also need to have blocking poses are the ball moves from one pillar to the other.
- Secondary Action – Gives the tail more life as it is moving independently from the body. The movement is different as it is a different form. In the ‘real world’ the principles of gravity and weight apply differently to different objects due to shape and mass.
- Timing – The tails timing works on a different cycle than the body. The tail is still moving after the body has stopped.
- Arc – The movement of the body and the tail both follow the movement of an arc to make the movement more natural.
Rig Controls
What are they?
A technique used in skeletal animation for representing a 3D character model using a series of interconnected digital bones.
Why are they important?
A rig gives you more control on your 3D animation. You can monitor the movement to great a personality
How do we use them?
We use rigs by their controls which is either in the channel box or you can use the mover icons to move them left, right, up, down, smaller, bigger, rotation. depending on how accurate you need it or how natural you can interact with the rig.
What are good ones?
A good rig is a rig with well thought out controls. You should only be able to more a rig control in the way in which it needs to be moved. For example if the toe doesn’t more a certain way in ‘real life’ then it shouldn’t have to in the virtual animation world. A good example of this is when you have very accurate face controls. Which will allow you to more the mouth to make certain sounds. This means the rig has been well though out to speak in a realistic way. This is dependant on the purpose of the rig. If the character is a cartoon then it can have more playful controls which are more exaggerated and a realistic rig should have controls which mirror a more realistic movement of its character.
This could be controversial as it can depend on the use of the rig. If it very categorised this can be limiting to what you can do with the rig.
A good rig is easy to use. You know where the controls are and you have options depending on your preference. e.g. with or without a moustache.
Animation Reference:
This was a reference I found on the internet to use because I didn’t feel totally comfortable drawing my own when it comes to a tail movement. I think this reference wasn’t the best because it didn’t show the timings or the right tail movements which might have been why I found this task particularly difficult. However the reason i did choose it was that the positioning of the tails direction. I think I could have done better with my reference selection.
I always enjoy making my animations fun and silly with the staging. I added eyes to the fox animation so that I felt a little more ownership over the rig even though I know everyone else was using it. I liked adding the bright colours to the scene to play into the cartoon and playful vibe.
Focusing just on the blocking of the animation I wanted to make sure they were nice arcs which were similar to the bouncing ball. I used the side view so that I could see the animation move from X axis.
As you can see that I have used the graph editor to smooth out that initial arc and need to curve the spline the second jump. This is pose to pose animation which I will focus and then work on the secondary action of the tail as it is more complicated.
Here I have used the trail motion tool to make sure the tip of the tail is always touching the trail. This is because the tail will always follow the primary action. The line works as a great reference where the tail should. This definitely helped me get my head around where this movement should move to. The tail rig had 4 different sections to it which I could move to imitate the movement of a fox tail. It was important not to more one more so than the others otherwise it would make an unrealistic shape of a tail which defies the rules of movement in the ‘real world’
Using the motion trail of where the body moves and the tail really helps to visualise the idea of how primary and secondary action are different. I can also go to the graph editor and smooth out any curve that I think don’t match the rest of the movement.
Final Outcome:
Feedback
- Timing needs to be after. Grab all keys and scale in the graph editor. (24 frames per bounce not 30)
- Frame 3- Need to change tail direction.
I didn’t enjoy making this animation as much as I thought I would. I think it was really hard to get my head around the overlapping of the tail to look realistic. I realise that how I thought the tail would move in this situation was actually not very accurate which make it confusing. However I think that next time I will have a better idea how to complete this principle in my animations.
For my showreel I decided that I would go back and make some of these changes as I didn’t feel too proud with the movement in the graph editor and also the colours were a bit sickly. I made the changes that I wrote down previously. The jumps are more realistic with 24 frames per jump rather than 30+. I also changed the arcs so they were like a bouncing ball. I did attempt to improve the tail movement but I definitely think there is room for improvement.