Performance Animation

We need to design actions by ourselves to complete the animation for this time. Thus I decided to first find some information online, which could help me to trigger my inspirations for designing actions. During the process of finding information, my first idea was [interesting]. What I wanted to design is a period of an interesting action show. To begin with, I watched some performance material as exampled by Charlie Chaplin. In silent films, characters need to express the story plot by using their body language. Also, appropriate exaggeration of character actions can better lead the audience to understand the meaning expressed by the actions that are done by the characters.

I have found some 3D animation works which were made by the students. I have sensed that the vividness of the character’s actions is connected with the body curves showed during the acting when characters are moving. While watching the 3D animation works that are presented by students, I have also learned some rhythm sensations from the character’s acting.

In the end, my plan was to design a movement to pick up the money. Thinking of picking up money, my first thought was that my character would be excited when performing. In this way, in my animation, I can combine [personalized walking] and [pick up things] to make animation actions. I was very lucky to find the video “50 Ways to Pick Up a Dollar” on YouTube. I planned to combine the two states of [Dramatic] and [Excited] to design my character’s actions.

About the plot design for the animation:

1. The character walks on the road at a stride.

2. Suddenly, the character finds that there is a piece of money lying on the ground.

3. The character turns left and right, checking if there’s anyone around.

4. The character crouches down quickly to pick up the money.

5. Lifting up the money and looking at it, the character finds that the money was real!

6. The character goes ahead excitedly with money

Thanks go to my friends for their helping me to film this action reference video, which has both been filmed on the side-face and the front-side at the same time.

Storyboard:

In the next step, I started to search for proper figure models. For this action design, I felt that a lovely cartoon-style model may need to be found. I have chosen Family_Girl as the model for which looks very cute. But I found that her arms and legs are too short as limited by being the cartoon figure. Thus in the following production process, I needed to ensure that the leg models won’t overlap too much due to bending while the characters are walking and raising legs. Before getting down to work, I have debugged every controller, making sure that they are under normal service conditions.

The controller for the Family_Girl model was very refined. Therefore I sincerely hoped that there will be no problems happened to the controller in the following animation production. I was unsurprisingly to find that there are controllers installed in the two small braids of the model’s head. When the characters were moving, the hair also needed to have moving curves, which I thought would also help me to recall the bounce-making process of squirrel tails.

I decided to firstly make the body actions of the character, while the facial expressions and the hairs of the character would be started to make after the body actions were confirmed.

To start with, I have made the mel that can select all body controllers.

For my character was required to interact with props, I have also made a faked paper money at 50 pound face value.

Here it started to make key frames for the character’s body actions.

000,032,048,058,076,097,114,140,178,209,231,258,278,298 were chosen as the initial keyframes. Of course, in the following production, I would continuously add keyframes. And these keyframes were enough for me to determine the character’s actions.

Notices during the process of making body keyframes:

1. When the character was walking, make sure his inclination angles in the crotches and shoulders were correct. For instance, when the right crotch of the character was lifted, the right shoulder of the character should be down, which would make the dynamics of the character more obvious. During the making, I also often simulated this action by myself for helping me to directly observe the motion tendency of the character.

2. During this film making, I hoped that my character looks more flexible, for which I would constantly remind myself to adjust the three controllers that are respectively in charge of the character’s chest, waist, and crotch. During the production process, I would first use the three controllers based on the front view to adjust the character to have his curves. And then I would adjust, based on the side view, the character for his back that is in the straight or curved state. By continuously coordinating the state presented in these two views, I could make the character’s actions more vivid and natural.

3. The turning around of the character. For the actions I have designed, the character needed to turn around to check if there are people around. I found that if the big waist controller was used for action adjusting, the adjustment for the waist controller and upper body controller was easy to cause problems when the character has a next-step walking. During this production, I would no longer use the big waist controller to spin the character’s upper body. Instead, I would try to use the annular controller that is on the crotch to spin the character. Therefore, when the character was moving, I can quickly adjust the dynamics of the character by merely selecting the crotch, waist and chest controllers and set them all to the initial state.

4. Currently, for the animation curve graphs of all controllers of the character, I chose to use the blocking state, which can help me directly observe whether the key actions of the character are correct.

Current character animation:

Okay. Currently, so far so good. The actions of my character look very interesting.

In the next step, I needed to add the keyframes for the middle parts. Currently, the character only had the actions as his feet stepping on the ground, but lacking the actions where he lifts up his feet. Thus, I needed to add the actions as lifting up the feet on my character. Firstly, I selected all the controllers, and then changed the blocking mode into the curve mode in the animation curve panel.

For the parts of 014,025,038,068,087,128,136,158,170,188,199,218,241,264,284, I have added keyframes for the actions. While I was making the keyframes, I found that there was sliding on the character’s footsteps. However, the two keyframes which were before and after the character’s feet have not made a difference at this moment. Then I started a long process for debugging. I have tried to fix the character’s feet by continuously increasing the inbetweens, which however has no effect. Then I started to doubt that whether the movement on feet was caused by body movement. Therefore, I have tried to adjust the controller on the character’s waist to ensure that character’s feet won’t move because of the weight of the model. In the end, I discovered that the movement of the feet was caused due to the arc of the curve in the animation curve panel was too big, which causes the displacement in the feet. After selecting the keyframes of the feet, I have adjusted the curve of this action to a straight line in the y-axis displacement in the action curve panel. In this way, the feet would not slide anymore.

At present, the animation curves of all controllers in the Animation Graph Editor:

During the production process, the movement of the props paper money has also met some problems. Initially, I wanted to use parent or point to restrain the paper money and the character’s hand. However, since at the beginning the paper money is lying on the ground, the direct restraining would make deform in hand when moving the paper money. In this way, I could only first make sure that the position of the paper money was correct on the keyframes of the character’s action. Then I could observe the position of the paper money in every frame by dragging the time axis. When finding the position of the paper money is offset, I would reset it manually. When finishing the keyframes of the paper money, I suddenly had an idea that it would be easier if I divide the animation into two parts — before picking up the paper money and after picking up the paper money. By doing this, the paper money was without any binding relationships before being picked up in the first period of animation. In the second animation where the paper money has been picked up, the character’s hand was directly restrained with the paper money. Okay, I would experiment this for the next time.

Present animation curve of controller of paper money in the Animation Graph Editor:

Present character animation:

I decided to attempt my production idea in the last time, which was to have a parent restrain on the paper money and hand.

After observing, I found that my character was very natural during the process from picking up the paper money to holding it later. Therefore, I have divided the file into two parts. For the first part of 0-178 keyframes, I chose to keep the original paper money as animation. For the second part of the 178-298 keyframes, I have deleted the animation of the paper money, adding parent restraints on the paper money and the hand. Of course, I need to re-adjust the character’s arm actions to ensure that the model is in the state of holding the paper money. Fortunately, after the adjustment, the movement of paper money looks more natural, which no longer has the feeling of drifting. At the same time, I have also modified the character’s actions when he was walking after picking up the money because I feel that the moving range of the previous model in the last few steps is too big, which makes the model very abrupt. Therefore, I have reduced the spinning range of the controllers on the model’s crotch, chest, and waist.

Present actions of keyframes of the character:

【0-178 keyframe】

【178-298 keyframe】

Present character animation:

Now, it starts to make the animation of the model’s face and hair.

In order to ensure that the final display angle is the same, firstly I need to create a “camera” in the 0-178 keyframe file, and then separately export the “camera” into the 178-298 keyframe file, which will ensure that the angles I rendered are inconsistency.

Make facial mel:

For making a vivid blinking action, I have created the eye-opening action for two keyframes that are before and after eyes blinking, which will ensure that the blinking action is relatively natural.

Model’s facial animation: