Jiawei's Blog

During the nineteenth week, I was mostly concerned with making character animation. My goal was to get the last four shots for the character animations done. These four shots were different from the others because they required more emotional acting, which made them even harder.

I used Motion Paths to make the ship’s flight path look like it was animated. Using this method, the animation was made quickly and without any problems. Using this method made sure that the ship moved smoothly and quickly.

In week 19, the requirement was to convert the animation graphic curves to spline curves, so all of the animations would be presented in spline mode. During this process, I identified some issues and challenges in my character animation. After converting the curves to spline mode, the transitions between poses were not seamless, and there was often a jitter in characters in keyframes that were close to each other, meaning the range of motion between these two keyframes was either too large or too small, making the action imprecise, which frustrated me. Based on George’s feedback on the blocking plus and my action references, I made some adjustments. I also added some necessary in-between frames to aid in the smoothness of my animation, enhancing the overall completeness of the animation.

During the eighteenth week, animating the characters was my main focus. First, I set up the main camera angles for the scene and made sure that the character’s movements were in sync with each camera’s view. This attention to detail was important for making poses and compositions that looked good. Since I didn’t have much time, my goal for the week was to take at least four of the eight planned camera shots. It was very important to reach this goal on time.

Character animation is one of the hardest parts of my project because it requires me to show how creatures move and act, which I haven’t done much research on before. But I took on this challenge with determination and a desire to give the characters life. I wanted the animations to give the characters personality and depth, so they would stand out on the screen.

In week 18, I added more details to the primary keyframes, including facial keyframes. I adjusted the pacing of the entire animation; some actions are fast, while others require easing, and I solidified these aspects at this stage, which was very helpful for adding more details later. Additionally, some action poses were not aesthetically pleasing, so I made adjustments to make them more visually appealing. At this stage, I realized that facial animation is more challenging to create than body animation because it involves many more subtle details and theories. When you open your mouth, it’s not just the mouth that’s involved, but the muscles of the entire face, which undoubtedly makes facial expression animation harder to control, even though I completed the entire blocking plus production.

In the 17th week, I started making a model of the ship for my second scene. This ship is made to look like a cartoon, so I focused on making it look cute and playful by giving it rounded edges and cute details. I also spent time making things like a stack of books and a sailor’s hat that were needed for the scene.

Since the project deadline was coming up, I took the chance to add textures to the ship and books, which made them look more colourful and interesting. I also did some simple rigging to make sure the objects are ready to be animated.

In the 17th week, based on George’s feedback, I made some modifications to the original animation reference, replacing the initial action of pointing with the finger with the character charging forward aggressively and roaring at two snowmen. Once the character reference was set, I began working on my main keyframes, which are the most important element in character animation. Whether the character’s pose is appealing will affect the overall presentation of the animation.