Current 3rd Year Computer Animation Projects (NOW FINISHED!)
- roberthowells96
- May 3, 2018
- 4 min read
UPDATE: All projects below have now finished. Please see the final work on the front page of my website.
My final year of my computer animation course at the University of South Wales is here and can only mean one thing. Use the skills I've learned over the years and apply them to a multitude of projects in the year. Not only that but also push the quality as far as it can go.
1.(September - November 2017) Collaborative Ident (Animation/Rigging)
Within the space of six weeks, I was tasked to work within a collaborative team to create a short ident for a brand. My role for this task was to create the rigs needed and animate the whole sequence.
Ideas for what brand to target included lots of video services/channels such as sci-fi, Netflix and Amazon, but we eventually settled on going with an ident for E4 because it would allow lots of creativity.
Our final idea focused on one alien who had to land on a nearby planet, but kept stumbling upon a conflict within each one. We then follows him then to “planet E4” which he flies up to unprovoked until a meteor strikes the planet.
To rig the character it required a simple but fairly adaptive set-up so the character could hold the steering wheel and let go when needed. He would be stationary inside his ship so there was no need to create legs.
Animating was a straightforward process because for each planet he would visit I would make a separate file for each. Each scene would be blocked and then polished accordingly. The sotryboard helped plan out the rough timing for the scenes and flesh out how the scenes were to be framed.
Overall I thought this project was a success and turned out to of a very standard in terms of quality, while meeting the initial plan for what was set.
2.(February - May) Collaborative Project: Video Game "Rots N Bots" (Animation/Rigging)
This collaborative game project is a strategy game in which you order your units to complete tasks such as attacking your opponent or destroying structures.
My tasks were to help in the creation of bringing the characters to life by rigging them, followed by making a set of animation for each. This included an attack, idle, walk, take hit and death.
The aim with rigging the characters was to make them simple, but while still being able to push them with a decent amount of character.
I was rigging one of the two factions, the “Bots”, which had hovering units, bipedal characters and quadruped characters. One unit in particular, the heavy, had a two handed hammer which was one of the hardest technical challenges to work out. There was a lot of variety in the rigging so each one had to be created from the ground up as a modular approach would not work.
As mentioned the animation for the characters were required to have the same specific animations. They were all aimed to be short while still keeping the quality I wanted.
As of typing this the animations are complete and have been passed off to the game designers where they will be implemented. Keep an eye out for the game and I will post a demo reel of it in action with all the animations.
3.(February - May) Personal Project: Creature Animation
This ten second animation includes two different creatures, a dog and a lizard. I wanted the dog to be more unsure/reserved but aggressive if it needed to be, while I aimed the lizard to be more playful and have higher energy. These different personalities would help make a more interesting piece.
Timing the scene was the hardest part of the project. Blocking the dog was useful but when it came to working out the speed of the lizard it took many iterations to get it correct. I followed a simple splined method of timing ups and down of it moving and from there I kept refining it.
Keep an eye on the blog/website for further updates as the final animation will be uploaded soon!
4.(February - May) Personal Project: Voice Act animation
To practise voice acting sequences I typically take existing clips from movies/TV shows and change the scene the dialogue is used in.
In this case I used a clip from the film Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), where two of the main characters are talking to each other.
I found the dialogue to adapt quite well in a dangerous situations and decided to have the characters tied up together. I then created some reference as a guide to express certain lines and see how it would be portrayed. I then used this footage while pushing lots of the poses to create a more engaging scene.
Keep an eye on the blog/website for further updates as the final animation will be uploaded soon!
5.(February - May) Personal Project: Voice Act animation
I took one of the many body mechanic rigs available and aimed to create a performance piece and express the reactions of the character through his movement.
I worked out a scene in which the character would stumble upon a cave which he is curious about. He then tries to lean in and check it out only to be frightened by a loud growl sound. Unsettled by the roar, he takes a breather to rest only to then build up courage to run into the cave. After charging in another growl is heard followed by the character running out of the cave and away from the scene.
When working out the animation in previs I planned the scene to be ten seconds long, only to realise that this was too fast to fit in the beats I wanted. I then worked out the timing further and kept it more contained to the front of the cave and reduce the distance he runs away from it.
Keep an eye on the blog/website for further updates as the final animation will be uploaded soon!
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