Final Animation

Shown below is the final animation:

Overall, I'm happy with how this animation has come out. I believe some further work with some keyframes and graph editor would have resulted in better actions for the finger pointing sections however, for the first time animating a rig, it is still fluid between the movements enough to believable.

The arms were awkward to animate as the pivots on the elbows and shoulders would not relate to one another properly. Further into the animation process, I managed to disconnect the pivots from each other and instead related them to the world allowing me free movement of the joints. This helped position the arms correctly for the standing up section.

As for the lip sync, this went very well for the first time. Some further work on the tongue and positioning of the teeth to allow it to show would have enhanced the reality of the words. By dropping in the audio clip on the time line and scrubbing the timeline, I could easily pin point when the mouth should move most, therefore minimizing the amount of keyframes required between each word.

Principals Pt 3

Solid Drawing is an important part of developing a character. When drawn, each opposite element should have opposing poses. For example, if a character had both their hands, eyes, feet and arms in the same pose, it would look rigid and not believable, however if these counter parts had different poses it would look more natural and therefore believable.

The last and arguably most crucial part of animation is timing.

Timing is able to convey many parts of animation from a characters emotions to the speed/mass of an object.

The first part of timing is Slow in/Slow out. This is a realistic aspect of real life and animation in which objects accelerate coming into the peak of their movements but towards the limits they decelerate. In other words, the middle section of the movement will almost always be the fastest.

Principals Pt 2

Some further principals that are widely accepted are how a character is shown to the audience. These are:

Line of Action
Silhouetting
Weight and Balance
Staging
Appeal

Line of Action is where an imaginary line is drawn through the center of the figure. This shows the flow of action. All the elements of the figure should follow this curve. Often these poses are exaggerated and wouldn't be seen in everyday life.

Silhouetting is providing your figure with a strong, recognizable silhouette. It allows the audience to know what character they are viewing just by its features. For example, if Bart Simpson was silhouetted, you would instantly recognize him from the spiky can shaped head.

Weight and Balance is how a figure changes their pose to accommodate for their center of balance. This can be changed due to lifting heavy objects or simply posing like a muscle man. Most of the time the legs and back are changing position.

Staging is positioning the character is a clear, readable angle to the audience so as they are able to see the action they are making. If we sat in the center of a theatre and the actors were side on, we would not be able to see their alternate sides meaning some of their actions would be clouded. If they were turned slightly, towards the audience, we would be able to see all their actions much clearer and therefore tell what action was being presented.

The above image is a skeletal reference of my final animation from pose to pose. You can see how the character is slightly angled to show the poses (Staging). The figure also puts a little weight into their knee (Weight and Balance).

Appeal is the last principal in this section. Appeal is simply how 'loveable' a character is. In the early days of animation, a character was usually drawn to be cute through such means as big eyes however that is changing for a more back story enforced appeal where characters with a story are more relatable.

Principles Pt 1

The principles of animation are a set of 'rules' that are accepted as the fundamentals to creating a smooth and believable character. These rules were written by two Disney employees - Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson.
 
The first of the principles is Squash and Stretch. This is where an object changes shape to accommodate for the energy being transferred to it but crucially not in volume. An example of squash and stretch (extreme) can be seen below...

As the ball hit the floor it squashes from the impact, as it begins to jump back up part of the ball delays behind as the other begins to move upwards, this is the stretch. The delay can be called 'follow-through'.

Follow-through is another principle, in this, there is a delay in the movement of one element in relation to another. With the ball, it is a little difficult to see. Another example that is easier to understand is a cape. When someone runs, the cape doesn't immediately gain the momentum of the person pulling it. Instead it takes a small moment for the momentum to reach through the person to the cape before it starts to move in relation. This is called follow-through.

The last principle that the ball example can explain is the 'Arc' movement. This is where most unrestrained objects will move in an arc pattern. When a ball bounces, it does not move back up in a line, instead it uses its angle and bounces off to follow an arc shape.

Smooth Animation and Lip Sync

The next part of the animation was to make it flow smoothly between the keyframes. This is a step up from the blockout. While the blockout was used for timing and quality, this stage is for the final piece.

Along with this, I began to listen to the audio file I selected. By dragging it onto the timeline, I could listen alongside watching the animation to see if the timing fit.

After I had smoothed the lip sync and animation, I added some blinks and movement to the head and pupils to fit alongside the speech and hand gestures.

The final animation shows it below:

Blockout Animation

The first task for animating the rig was to create a 'blockout' of the animation. A blockout is a rough outline of how the animation will flow from keyframe to keyframe. This allows us to see whether a certain part will need more work and whether our timing is correct.

Shown below is a GIF of several major blockout keyframes in the animation.

The major stages are sitting, leaning back, standing up and gestures.

I could see from one point the hand movements were not correctly moving with the axis of the elbow. I corrected this later by changing the anchor point to a different joint.

Also, the flow between sitting and standing needed more work. The blockout helped me to realise this and saved me time as I knew the areas I needed to work on before starting the final animation.