Category: Advanced and Experimental 3DCA Techniques

Dialogue Shot – Polish

In this week, I continued polishing my audio animation shot at the blocking plus stage. I used spline mode instead of using stepped mode in Maya. The teacher gives me important feedbacks regarding facial animation. I should focus more on how the face transitions from one key pose to another, and to consider which side of the face is open or compressed depending on the head direction.

In particular, I learned that facial difference is very important for creating more appealing and dynamic animation. For example, when the character looks at the right side, the right eyebrow and eye should appear slightly more open and larger, while the left side becomes more compressed. The same principle can be applied to other facial features such as the cheeks and the top of the head to emphasise the form and direction of the face. Based on this feedback, I would like to apply these ideas in my next polishing stage to improve the quality of my facial animation.

After receiving these advices, I realised that I sometimes forget important principles when moving on to new shots or stages of animation. From now on, I want to be more consistent in applying core animation principles across all of my work, even when starting a new shot.

Creature Study Blocking

This week, I started working on a creature locomotion animation shot based on the research I conducted last week. In the previous week, I focused on horse locomotion, but for this project, I decided to create a tiger locomotion instead, as I found it more interesting and suitable for my portfolio development. This was my first time animating a full creature locomotion cycle, as I have mainly worked with human characters and stylised humanoid creatures in the past. Because of this, the process was quite challenging, but at the same time, I found it very exciting to explore something completely new.

During the production, I faced several difficulties, especially in understanding how to animate the movement of four legs in a natural walking cycle. To solve this, I carefully observed tiger reference videos many times and analysed their movement in detail. While creating the blocking stage, my tutor advised me that for creature locomotion, it is more effective to use spline mode rather than stepped mode. I also learned that the blocking stage for this type of animation is usually around 70% complete before moving forward. Based on this advice, I progressed my blocking to about that level and switched to spline mode in Maya.

In my blocking, I focused particularly on the relationship between the hips, shoulders, and head, as these are key areas that drive the overall motion. I also tried to understand how each of the four legs moves and interacts during the walking cycle. Overall, this week was a challenging but very valuable experience. It helped me gain a better understanding of creature animation and gave me new insights that I can apply to future portfolio work.

Dialogue Shot Blocking Plus

This week, I refined my audio animation shot by breaking down the blocking further and adding more keyframes. I added keyframes roughly every five to six frames, which made the animation feel smoother and more natural compared to my previous version. Although I am still working in the blocking stage, I used the stepped mode in the Graph Editor to maintain clear poses while improving the timing and spacing. This week, I focused more on understanding how timing and spacing affect the overall motion when refining the blocking in Maya. I also learned how to import and sync audio files properly within Maya. This is a useful workflow that I plan to use when continuing to develop and polish my audio animation shot at home next week.

During the tutorial, my tutor gave me positive feedback, saying that my blocking stage was good and that I could move on to the next step, such as a more advanced blocking plus. They also advised me to focus more on facial movement, especially the eyebrows, eyes, and lips, to improve the emotional performance. Overall, this week helped me improve both my technical workflow and my understanding of performance animation. I will continue developing these aspects in my next stage of production.

Creature Study

I did a research for creature study with my classmate. We chose a topic that is about Horse Locomotion. And we separate to study about it. And I researched about horse emotion, horse facial expression etc.

This week, I researched creature locomotion, focusing in particular on horse movement and behaviour. I collaborated with Avi and Binbin to study different aspects of horse locomotion, including how it is represented in various references and narrative contexts.

I specifically focused on horse facial expressions and body language in different emotional states, such as anger, happiness, calmness, and sadness. Through this research, I gained a better understanding of how horses communicate emotions without using human language. I realised that animals do not communicate through spoken language, but instead express themselves through body language, facial expressions, and vocal sounds. These elements are essential for conveying emotion and intention. By observing them closely, it is possible to understand their personality and emotional state.

I also learned that horses are very sensitive animals compared to many others. As herbivores, they are often escaped from carnivorous animals such as lions and tigers in the wild. Because of this, they need to stay alert and aware of danger at all times. This affects their behaviour and makes them highly responsive to their environment. For example, when horses feel negative emotions such as fear, anger, or sadness, their eyes become more open and sometimes show more of the white part. Their ears move quickly and react to surrounding sounds, and their tail movement becomes either very fast or tense. Each part of their body reflects their emotional state in a clear way. On the other hand, when they are calm or happy, their movements become slower and more stable, and their body language appears relaxed and rhythmic.

Based on this research, I would like to apply these observations to my future animation work, especially in animal locomotion studies. I also presented this research in front of my classmates and tutors. Although I felt nervous about speaking in English, I did my best and completed the presentation. Overall, this research helped me better understand animal behaviour and movement. In the future, I would like to study tiger locomotion as well and continue developing my understanding of creature animation.

Breathing Animation

This week was a workshop week, and the class was held remotely due to the tube strike on this week. During the workshop, I created an animation shot focusing on a character breathing cycle. The character had a unique design that resembled a snake, with a long tail, a long tongue, and spikes along its back. Because of these features, it was an interesting character to animate.

During the session, our tutor demonstrated the workflow for creating a breathing animation step by step. The clear explanation helped me understand the process much better and gave me a deeper understanding of how to approach this type of animation. What I found most exciting was seeing how much life a simple breathing motion could add to a character. At the beginning, the character was completely still and felt lifeless, almost like a statue. However, after adding the breathing animation, the character suddenly felt alive and believable. It was fascinating to see how such a subtle movement could have such a strong impact.

From a technical perspective, I also applied overlapping action to different parts of the character, including the spine, tail, arms, and the spikes on its back. By creating slight delays between these elements, the movement appeared more natural and organic. This helped make the character feel more vivid and realistic. Another useful technique I learned was the use of Animation Layers in Maya. The tutor explained that it can be helpful to create the breathing motion on one animation layer and then add other actions, such as body movement or acting, on separate layers. This makes the animation process more flexible and easier to manage. I would like to use this workflow in future projects.

Overall, I really enjoyed this workshop. It gave me new technical knowledge, practical skills, and a fresh perspective on character animation. Looking back, I can see my progress, and I feel motivated to continue improving my animation skills in the future.

Dialogue Shot Blocking

This week, I also polished my audio animation shot. Although it is still in the blocking stage, I added camera angles to improve the storytelling and visual clarity of the scene. When deciding on the camera angles, I considered how to guide the viewer’s attention toward the character’s movement, rather than distracting them with unnecessary complexity. I used two simple camera setups, from a side view and a front view. This allowed the audience to clearly focus on the character’s performance.

The animation shows one character expressing a message similar to “go live your life” to another character. Because of this, I initially included both characters in the same shot. However, after that moment, I shifted the focus more toward the main character in order to emphasise facial expressions, different angles, and emotional changes. To be honest, I feel that camera work and composition are still my weak points. Because of this, I plan to study camera angles and layout more deeply. I have found that library resources are especially helpful for this, so I would like to use them more actively for self-study in the future.

Overlap

This week, I created an animation shot during a workshop class. We worked on animating a sea monster character, focusing on overlapping action, particularly in the tail movement.

The main goal was to understand how to animate the tail using overlapping techniques, where different parts of the tail move with a slight delay from one another. Before taking this workshop, I struggled to understand how overlapping action worked, especially for tails and chains of bones in character rigs. However, through this exercise, I gained a much clearer understanding of both the technique and the workflow required to create convincing overlapping motion.

One challenge was that the sea monster rig was much more complex than the character rigs I had used before. As a result, I found it difficult to control some parts of the character. Although I did my best to apply the overlapping technique, there were moments when the tail movement felt unnatural. For example, when the character moved from side to side, parts of the tail sometimes moved in the opposite direction, making the motion look slightly strange. Despite these difficulties, I was able to understand the fundamentals of overlapping action much better than before. I would like to continue practising this technique so that I can create smoother and more natural tail movements in future projects.

After submitting the exercise, we watched everyone’s animations in class. I was very impressed by the quality of my classmates’ work. Many students had strong ideas for camera angles, composition, and staging, which made their shots engaging and visually appealing. What I found most interesting was that, even though we all used the same rig and character, every animation felt different. Each student brought their own personality, emotions, and creative ideas into their work. This reminded me how important it is to develop a unique style and approach when creating animation for a portfolio or showreel. It is definitely something I would like to think about more in my future projects.