3D Adaption

For this project we had to turn the 2D background we made in Toonboom into a 3D background, using Maya. I found this incredibly difficult and am not in any way pleased with the result. It has just ended up looking like a worse version of my 2D one. Even though I used the sculpt tools you can't actually tell, except when at certain angles in Maya.

More Constraints In Maya

Another exercise to show the use of constraints. I did this task much quicker than the block push as I'd learnt from the mistakes I made last time. I'm pleased with the way the character slides their fingers under the block to pick it up, as I think it looks quite natural, also the timing on when she drops the block is working nicely.
The panting she does after dropping the block looks quite weird, I don't think it's too clear what she's doing. The main thing I was trying to achieve with this was to make the block seem really heavy and I'm pretty sure it does...... so success!!

Block Push

Here's the latest installment of 3D, this time the character had to push a block. This involved using constraints, which I can now say I understand, so that the block effectively sticks to the hands, enabling the character to push it without you having to keyframe the block individually. I'm fairly pleased with the way this turned out, however I think the whole thing could be speeded up in general, as it's a bit slow. I did this to show that the block was heavy but I'm pretty sure I over did it. There are a few foot slips in there too which could be neatened up in the future.

Walk Cycle & Progressive Walk

This is a walk cycle and progressive walk I created using Maya.

Dear Sweet Morpheus

We were given a character rig, the beautiful Morpheus, which we then had to put in different poses, each one showing a different emotion (hopefully you can tell what each one's aiming for). I enjoyed this as it was fascinating to see just how many controls the character had, especially on the face, where you can even move the corners of the upper eyelid. I did find it challenging to get a decent expression on his face, for example I think the one of him laughing could easily be confused for him feeling sick.... laughter or pain,,,, two completely different states but they look so similar. The mouth was also quite annoying as I couldn't really get the teeth and tongue to fit in it properly and found them quite difficult to control. I've given you different angles of my poses, simply because I'm generous like that.

Squishy On A Mission...

This task involved creating an environment using polygons, which we then had to place our little squishy ball character in and make it interact with the scenery. The ball needed to have a personality and bounce around of its own accord. The stairs could have been made better, they have a few random edges that stick out and if I did it again I would make the steps 3D as at the minute they're just flat faces, they have no thickness to them.
I'm quite annoyed as you can't see that when the ball recoils from the edge at the top of the stairs it starts to shake in fear before he jumps in the air, as the video player is too small, before I ran the file through Premiere Pro you could see it fine.
I think I've managed to give the ball a bit of character though and the good news is Maya is no longer my enemy, but it's still not a friend by a long shot.

Bouncing Balls

This is my second attempt at animating a light bouncing ball in Maya, as my first attempt was awful! This is definitely an improvement though and although it's still got maybe a bit too much squash and stretch it's definitely getting there.

This is my heavy bouncing ball, it's better than my light one and was a lot easier to do, probably because I used a minimal amount of squash and stretch.

Frustration!!!!

Ok so I have never used Maya before and I'm finding it insanely difficult and frustrating. There is just so much to take in!
As our first assignment we had to animate a light ball bouncing and a heavy ball bouncing. This is my light ball version. I'm really not happy with it as I think I've used the stretch effect far too much and I think this is what's making it look so erratic. I do however like the little roll the ball does at the end. Hopefully I'll have time to go back to the studio and improve this before I submit it as I'm sure I can do better. But on the bright side I do feel a bit more comfortable using Maya than I did at the start of this task and I'm sure with practice I'll get better.