Week 8_ Animation start

Having the week off has been the most productive. I have been working on the blocking animation for Molly. I did have some frustration, but generally it has been fun, exciting and interesting.

 Generally, I have been quite happy with the progress of this animation. I have been using many of the references recorded of Jess for Molly. This has been extremely helpful and I have used a number of components from various shots for the same line. This has made the acting performance far more interesting, and I hope this reflects the performance and how Molly ponders.

 In terms of problems, I have had some small problems, once again with weighting, and these have only been discovered while I have been doing my animation. This has been interesting as there have been many aspects that I tested while I doing rigging/weight painting that seemed to work but didn’t quite work when doing the actual animation. What I have discovered that weight painting never stops and is an ongoing process. Another problem has been that when doing a playblast, one of the cameras crashes Maya whereas the others don’t. So I tried it with one of the established cameras and moved it earlier, however this too crashed. I do have sound, so I would think it’s the sound rather than the camera. Will try again tomorrow (Monday).

Analysing and reflecting what has been achieved so far with the animation, it has been fun, and enjoyable, a lot less stressful and far more enjoyable than rigging and painting weights. I can start seeing my ideas and videos references coming alive by seeing personality coming through my animation and Molly. Yes I have been bogged down with some aspects but generally that’s more to do with trying to make key poses perfect now than worrying about it later down the track. Having a number of video references has been key and important to getting the animation right.

 

Generally, this is the start of the fun aspect of the process, seeing the character coming alive and my goal is to have basic Molly animation finish ASAP. 

Videos to come ASAP (due to the size of the files)