Mini-Project: Trip and Fall

Nov. 19, 2021

Nov. 12, 2021 - Refining the Walk 

Unfortunately, I've lost a lot of the progress I've done last week, mainly the facial features when he falls. Aside from that, there was not much that was lost. Meanwhile I was upset about the extra animation being gone, I chose to tackle the pivotal parts of this animation, mainly the spacing between frames and the last falling poses. My biggest issue was that I was not able to actively work on this assignment due to essays and other animation work that I had to turn in; thus, there is barely any progress on this piece. 

Spacing Between Frames 

The walking poses were originally 3-4 keys apart due to following the references. When I watched my work, I realized that the speed worked well for the falling sequence, but it was too quick for the walking one. Since I wanted to make the character look like he was strolling through the park, I game him a slower walk by spacing out his key poses. 

Last Falling Poses 

While watching last week's work, the fall poses weren't as impactful as I thought. I honestly theorize that may be the contributor to the confusion on his fall. 

Thus, to fix this, I studied the heel break animation to get a closer look on the feet placements. I was able to screenshot them for reference. 

Especially in the last frame, the body was a lot more bent and the legs are lifted dramatically compared to my version. 

I did my best to animate the legs slamming down onto the ground after being up in the air (4th picture of fall). I animated him laying there for a couple more seconds and then rotating his head in defeat.  

Conclusion 

After playblasting, the walk cycle just looked like it was put into slow motion instead of having an organic stroll feel to it. I have two contributing factors to this: I merely just spaced the frames and the playback settings. 

I noticed that I didn't do much with the frames; it's basically a carbon copy of my old timeline. Perhaps I need to shorten the distance between the frames where the character brings his feet back to create a sharper bounce in his walk. As for the playback settings, I had it set to 24frames x 1sec, which plays the frames like I want, but fails to be a testrun. I want it to play the exact same way as the playblast version. 

Nov. 5, 2021 - Splining and Refining (Finished Walk Cycle) 

Front walk cycle

Side Walk Cycle

Upon last week's critique, my peers have noted that there is too much stagnancy in the key frames (evenly spread apart) and the head lacking a bounce that I was concerned of before. As an audience, they took notes of the things I failed to notice from the creator's perspective: it's very nice to catch a view of my project from different eyes and point out the errors. 

• It doesn't look like the character twisted his ankle, but rather he tripped on something. 
• the character is falling backwards where he is actually supposed to be falling forward
• There needs to be more rotations on his hips and legs
• There needs to be a final pose (him flat on the ground)
• There is a still leg in the animation 
• Feet are skating across the ground, making the walk look uncanny
  
• Don't move the master circle (circle on ground)

Following that moment, I fixed a couple of errors they pointed out, including adding the head bounce, fixing the still leg to where it moves naturally with the cycle, and adding the final pose. I added hip and leg rotations to give his walk a more natural feel in contrast to his static walk before. Luckily, I saved a copy of the walk cycle alongside the walk animation (where the master circle isn't used to make him move), so I simply discarded the walking animation and kept the walk cycle.  To make things easier for me and the viewers, I set his original pose to be (0,0,0) instead of in the corner. 

I tried fixing the animation to where he was tripping on his broken ankle, but with trying to readjust his keyposes to make them forward instead of backward, I ended up breaking a lot of geometry. When watching it a couple of time, I realized that, with the animation being a couple seconds long, the snapping ankle won't be that visible to the audience (they would really only know if I added a snapping noise in it). Thus, I kept their advice and made him slip on something slippery and fall. Just work with what I got. 

What I am super thrilled about is that I finally fixed the Maya issue! I first updated Maya, and I was disappointed to see that barely anything has changed. With the help of my classmates, I changed my animation settings to "play every frame", and the results worked perfectly! I can now testplay my animation in real time without the frames skipping. 

There were still a couple of things that I couldn't get to right away. Here is my list on what to do for next week, and by then I intend to complete this animation: 

• Add a motion trail (recommended instead of changing the master circle)
  
• Fixing the fingers within frames 
• Adjust key frames in the graph
• Add a prop to indicate he tripped on something. Meanwhile I couldn't find any free banana peel rigs, I can find alternatives

Oct. 29, 2021 - Blocking the Trip and Fall Sequence

This week was more of a minor progression. I have created a specific schedule last week to further assist my animation progress regarding what days of the week I was scheduled to work on a specific thing for the animation.

• Oct. 22/24: record my walk cycle 
• Oct. 25-26: add props and floor to create background
• Oct. 27-29: block trip and fall sequence 
• Nov. 1-5: splining & touch ups 

I admit that I didn't record my walk cycle merely because I was able to use the walk cycle images as a reference for blocking and timing. From the side view, it looks relatively okay, albeit it comes off as a little uncanny in the front view. I will follow my advice to give the character's head more of a bounce as well as a "bouncier walk" once I get the blocking for the whole work done. 

I finished the walk cycle and the trip and fall blocking, which is awesome. I categorized them into two different files: the "still" walk cycle and the "moving" animation cycle. 

Moving Cycle

Still Cycle

I have updated my Maya program, but it's working only slightly better. Meanwhile working on it no longer lags, playtesting my work results in some frames skipping, causing a huge amount of lag between frames. I could only see my results in its true form after playblasting them. 

Immediately I have noticed just how quick paced it is. That's because the keyframes are even spaced out and the entirety is only 45-50 frames. Since the animation runs on 24 fps, the final render is only 2 seconds! 

Even though the graph is blurred, you can clearly see how even spaced out the key frames are, showing no diversity/personality in the character's movements. It's also only 50 frames. 

By next week, my main points are to fix the timeframe and to add some more props. The schedule will go accordingly: 

• Oct 29/ 31:  add background props 
• Nov 2-4: adjust timeframes and keyframes 
• Nov 4: edit facial expressions

Oct. 22, 2021 - Blocking the Walk Cycle

My goals were rather small this week. My biggest intent was to work on the character's walk cycle first, in which they are supposed to be marching, and I am happy to be able to achieve that. 

Throughout my time, I have devised what this following animation will contain:

• The character will be marching happily down a pathway 
• By the third step, the character's ankle will twist and they will fall. 

This project is far more simple than the main project, and I intend for this animation to be a minimum of 5 (but no more than 10) seconds long. Regarding to the character's first sequence of character animation, I structured just a basic walk cycle by referencing the cycle charts below. I did not film a reference. 

The walking cycle still feels very stiff to me; perhaps I need to animate the head bobbing to give them a bit more life. Because this character is in a really good mood and oblivious to unforseen events, I want to give them a very noticeable bounce in their stride. I'd prefer to wait until the entire blocking is done, but for the meantime, I want to record myself walking to help me out a lot more. 

Because my biggest issue with my large project was that I didn't follow a consistent schedule, I will get strict with this one. That way, it will prevent me from burning out so quickly. 

• Oct. 22/24: record my walk cycle 
• Oct. 25-26: add props and floor to create background
• Oct. 27-29: block trip and fall sequence 
• Nov. 1-5: splining & touch ups 

In regards to my big animation project, I've decided to take somewhat of a hiatus, at least until I finish this animation. I'm really unhappy with the way that it's looking as I'm having issues fixing the camera and Character 1's movements. Luckily, my classmates gave me various solutions to fix some problems, but I was disheartened when they struggled to understand what was going on/ didn't critique right away. I've done a risky move by straying away from my references and tackling a complex dialogue sequence without warming up to it. 

I'm tempted to redo the entire animation, redo the reference videos, or work on a new project all together. I do not see the issue in restarting, but I will ask my classmates and professors if that is something I should do at this time. 

Oct. 15, 2021 - References and Staging

To take a step back from my current animation project, I have decided to tackle on a smaller project that will allow me to get a better bearing of animation. 

Initially, I wanted to do another audio project, but I feel like I would overwhelm myself if I were to work on two big projects simultaneously. Hence, I decided against using dialogue for this project, and will focus more on movement. 

I will work on a simple walk cycle, but I will spice up the scenario by having the character trip and fall. Attached below is the walk and trip reference I will be using. Unfortunately, it is only recorded on the side view instead of it having a front, side, and back view. 

My reference is on 0:10, or the Heel Break

I will be referring to my basic animation lecture lessons to help me with walk cycles. Attached below are various frame keys for basic walk cycles. 

I was able to get the first key frame. Except with some minor adjustments to the character's leg placements and fists, their first contact pose is practically done. I wanted to continue and work on the rest of the blocking, but my file has crashed multiple times. I believe it's either a software issue or that I have too many tabs. 

My main intent is to get the blocking done for the larger project; but by next week, I plan to finish the rest of the walk frames done. They will take about three steps until their heel freaks out around their fourth step and falls.