Month: June 2024

This week, I made some adjustments to the blocking in the last homework, mainly based on the teacher’s feedback. The following are detailed suggestions and thoughts for improvement:

First, when the character is about to start running, a preparatory action of stepping back needs to be added. This change can better reflect the character’s momentum accumulation and make the starting action look more natural and powerful. The addition of this preparatory action can enhance the character’s expressiveness and the audience’s sense of substitution.

Second, because I changed the camera angle from the front side to the 3/4 side view, the character’s movements can be more clearly seen. However, this also brought some new problems, such as the character’s posture is not clear enough on the keyframe. For example, the arm behind is blocked by the body, making the movement unclear. To solve this problem, I need to raise the arm behind higher to make the posture look more stretched and clear. In addition, in some keyframes, the positions of the two arms overlap, making it difficult to distinguish the front and back arms. Therefore, I need to adjust the position of the arms and separate them to ensure that each action is clearly visible.

Third, when the character jumps, because it requires a lot of strength, I need to make the preparatory action of squatting bigger and more exaggerated. This can better convey the process of the character’s accumulation of strength, making the take-off action more vivid and powerful, and also increase the expressiveness and viewing of the animation.

Fourth, the character’s arms need to make an arc movement following the body’s movement when landing, just like the tail animation in the ball bouncing we did before. In this way, the smoothness and naturalness of the character’s movements can be increased, making the entire movement more in line with the laws of physics and the audience’s expectations.

Finally, when the character finally lands, the arc of the pelvis position presents a triangle. However, in general, the arc of the character’s movement should be circular. Therefore, I need to adjust this part of the action and change the trajectory of the pelvis to a circular shape to make the character’s movement smoother and more natural.

Feedback:

This week we made a blocking assignment for the reference video. First, I set the keyframes for the animation. On these keyframes, I need to pay special attention to the angle and camera position. The character’s movements must be clearly visible, such as the movement of the arm, and there should be no overlap or blur on these keyframes to ensure that the character’s outline is clear and the audience can accurately grasp the character’s movements .

The second point is about the performance of the preparatory action, which should be more exaggerated to highlight the dynamic curves and movement changes of the character. By strengthening the performance of the preparatory action, we can make the character’s movements more vivid and powerful, thereby attracting the audience’s attention and conveying richer emotions and information. This exaggerated expression method helps to increase the fun and expressiveness of the animation, making the character’s movements more vivid and three-dimensional.

Next, I will polish these keyframes to further enhance their visual effects and expressiveness. By fine-tuning the details of each keyframe, the character’s movements are smoother and more natural, while maintaining clear and visible characteristics.

This week we had a preliminary explanation of Body Mechanic. The teacher first emphasized a very important point: in animation, the character’s body movements should be the core of the performance, rather than relying on the character’s lines to drive the development of the plot. This highlights the importance of body mechanics in animation production. Through the character’s body language and movements, emotions and stories can be conveyed more vividly and intuitively, making it easier for the audience to be attracted and understand the plot.

Secondly, the teacher once again emphasized the principle of “Keep it clear and simple”. In the film, make sure that the audience can clearly grasp the characteristics of each shot, and don’t let other elements dominate. Specifically, it is to avoid putting too much information and details in one shot, which will distract the audience and reduce the comprehensibility and visual effect of the plot. Concise shot design can help the audience quickly grasp the key points of the story, thereby enhancing the viewing experience.

This week’s homework is to find a reference video for making body mechanics and draw a plan. By watching the reference video, we can learn from the body movement performance techniques in professional works and understand how to convey emotions and promote the development of the plot through movement. Then, based on these references, we need to draw a detailed plan to clarify the design and changes of each key action. This will not only help us maintain the consistency and fluidity of the action in actual production, but also improve our overall animation quality and expressiveness. I hope that through this assignment, we can further master the important skills of body mechanics and lay a solid foundation for future animation creation.

And this is my reference and planning

After the last few weeks of updates, here is a preview of what I ended up with.

In order to complete this project as my final major work (FMP), I realized that the current animation effects may be a bit too long, so I need to streamline the shots appropriately. In addition, I noticed that most of the existing shots are in a horizontal angle, which makes the animation look a bit bland and boring. In order to solve these problems, I plan to look for some suitable reference materials on the Internet, learn from the lens angles and dynamic effects in excellent works, and make my animation more visually attractive and narratively tense through a variety of lens techniques such as high angles, low angles, and bird’s-eye views, as well as appropriate dynamic shots. At the same time, I will use light and shadow and color changes to enhance the atmosphere and emotional expression of the scene, making the overall effect more vivid and fascinating.

Feedback:

Replace the bird model with a 3D model instead of a simple sphere, and also replace the rope and heart effects with 3D models. The teacher provides two model websites that can be used to replace the bird model and the NPC model.

Replace the Yue Lao hand and pen with character models, avoiding simple geometric shapes so that the audience can more clearly understand what is happening.

As Cupid’s arrow shoots at the two people, if they are too close, the arrow will move slowly. Therefore, the distance between the NPC and the camera needs to be extended so that the arrow does not appear to fly slowly.

When Cupid falls to the ground, add some gravity effects to the character to make his movements look more natural instead of falling to the ground stiffly.

As Cupid retreats, highlight the arrow so that the audience can clearly see what pierced Cupid and understand his reaction. Otherwise, the audience may be confused.

These improvements will increase the visual effect and audience understanding, and improve the quality of the overall work. Remember to carefully review and test each step to ensure that the final work achieves the expected effect.