GFXtutor offers Animation Tutorials, Character Rigs, 3d Models, Texture, Scripts and More!: CG Academy Animation Fundamentals 2 Adding Character

CG Academy Animation Fundamentals 2 Adding Character | 2.0GB

RS & HF | Release Date:September 26, 2009

The second part of our Animation Fundamentals series will build on the core animation techniques Simon taught you in the previous tutorial. Here we look at the importance of analysing and understanding our characters before attempting to animate them. How good staging, contrasting poses, observing silhouettes and related techniques will help deliver your drama clearly to the viewer. Simon will show you how the pose-to-pose animation technique will allow you to quickly and effectively animate in a production environment. Simon completes the tutorial with a practical example of how to put all of these principles into effect in a real world example staring Floppy the alien.

This tutorial is aimed at a user that is comfortable in general 3dsmax and with the animation interface and general animation skills. It is highly recommended that you view DVD1 in this series, before viewing this tutorial.

CH01: Understanding Your Character

Exactly what is your character? How are they physically made up, one leg, two legs, a floating gas bag? And what makes them tick? Are they angelic but troubled, or a BBQ mephit? Here Simon looks at the importance of knowing your character before you move into animating them.

CH02: The New Rig - Translation

Our erstwhile hero of tutorial 1, Floppy has regenerated. He now has more expressive eyes and a mouth. Simon runs through the new rigs features here. Starting with the movement/translation controls.

CH03: Eye Controls

We continue our exploration of the new character rig with a look at its eye controls.

CH04: Mouth Controls

And we complete the new rig boot camp with a quick look at the mouth controls and how they are achieved using 3dsmax's morph target system.

CH05: Facial Animation Principles

Much of a characters emotion and intent can be read in its face, and especially in the eyes. Simon runs you through the key points to consider here.

CH06: Emotion, Body Language & Posing

Only so much can be conveyed using the face though. So here Simon looks at the importance of body language and how it can convey emotion, even when a character is trying to hide it.

CH07: The Pose-To-Pose Technique

The standard animation production method is called Pose-To-Pose. It is preferred as it is a quick and transparent method, where you can easily show your ideas early in the production process. Avoiding any possible wasted effort if an idea is not liked down the line.

CH08: Break-down Poses

Each key pose in the pose-to-pose technique can translate to one another in a myriad of ways. Often intermediate poses, know as break downs help inject more drama. Simon explores these here.

CH09: Line-Of-Action

What is the raw pose of your character. Are they erect and proud, tired and bowed, or twisting to launch a punch. Here Simon explores the importance of considering your characters line-of-action.

CH10: Silhouettes

Posing your character in a way that makes its form clear is what we look at here, with Silhouettes.

CH11: Exaggeration

Adding just a little more juice to each pose of your animation can give it just that spark your looking after. Simon discusses where to use, or not use exaggeration here.

CH12: Contrast

If you do not introduce enough change from one pose to another, your animation can appear bland and lifeless.

CH13: Staging

If you were an actor on a stage, would you play to the audience, or to the back of stage. These considerations are just as important in CG. Love your audience and they will love you!

CH14: Heavy Metal Headache

Floppy it seems is in for a nasty surprise. In this practical character animation example Simon will take you through the key stages in character animation. From block, through first pass animation and finishing with small refinements. Simon gives you an outline of the process ahead here.

CH15: Blocking - Part 1

Simon starts roughing out the basic poses of the animation here, in what is known as the blocking process. This gives us a frame-work on which later work is based.

CH16: Blocking - Part 1

And we complete the roughing, or Blocking process in this chapter.

CH17: First Pass Animation - Part 1

Now that we have our basic poses sketched in, Simon works into them, adding break-down poses as needed and refining the animation so that it does not follow a simple and mechanical looking linear interpolation from pose to pose.

CH18: First Pass Animation - Part 2

And the first pass animation run is completed in this chapter.

CH19: Refining - Part 1

Of course, first pass is not called first pass for nothing. Here Simon refines on the initial animation run, to add nuances and polish as needed.

CH20: Refining - Part 2

And with our animation reaching a high gleam, we wrap up work on our practical example, Heavy Metal Headache. You should now be ready to tackle your own first character animation!

overdone
Definition:	Represented as greater than is true or reasonable.
Synonyms:	exaggerated, overstated

CG Academy Animation Fundamentals 2 Adding Character

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