Animating in Maya

So for animation, up until week eight, i feel that i have a solid enough understanding of the human anatomy to try a mini challenge and so have decided to watch this tutorial. it was about animation to a dialogue scene and then animating a moving hold. both were interesting and had points that i didn't consider before.

STAGING

- a long shot is best for a scene where their is a lot of movement. the closer the camera is to the character then the less that character would be moving.

- a mid shot allows you to get closer to the face and be able to express more emotion while still being able to animate the arms and chest that is visible.

- a close shot is if the character is completely still.

next, is the clarity. you want to ensure that its only one action seen at the time, then the next and the next. so if you have to much going on in screen at the same time, you will not be able to convey the the particular motion you want because it is covered with other and less important movements.

Now to do a dialogue scene, first just listen to the audio. their is two approaches that you can follow. which is either acting out the scene and drawing thumbnails or acting and recording yourself to later analyse. i preferred drawing thumbnails for my two animations while a recorded reference helped a lot more for 3D animation.

Afterwards, where the scene is set up and you can start out the blocking phase. this can be rough and doesn't need to many key frames and the in between will be done later on. placeholders are useful for keeping your focus on the one character.

- Start the blocking out in stepped and then switch to auto. switch off the hair and the clothes.

what i liked about this tutorial was that it really helped me become more familiarised with the facial controls for the mery rig, as its more complicated then the Trevor rig provided in the first trimester.

STYLE

Next factor to consider is how one animates, as the video showed different examples and how to ensure that the characters remain life like. because unlike 2D, 3d animation tends to look dead if you don't give the particular body part any movement.

- Cloudy with a chance of meatballs

- Hotel Transylvania

- Toy story

- Tangled