Regarding a general approach to animating, I like to first block in the Golden Poses, making sure that the poses are clear and readable for the audience. Then it’s time to take it all into Maya, or your preferred package, and get animating in CG.
This can feel like a restriction on your creative freedom. The rig, however well created, will always be something that you will have to work around to maximise its potential.
The “organic” nature of paper and pencil lends you complete freedom to plan and explore ideas. I personally find that before beginning to animate in CG, planning on paper really helps. You’ll need to push the poses, as what’s imperative is that the movement looks and feels right, not that it is “mathematically” correct. Bizarrely, a totally faithful mimicry of reality actually looks unreal. It’s essential to note that while observing reality is vital, it’s not absolute reality that you’ll need to recreate in CG. Take your footage into the fabulous and utterly free Kinovea, break it down and draw over it to get a feeling for the key poses, timing, spacing, the way the balls lose energy and so on. Film the balls bounce then watch them over and over. Compare the behaviour of the different balls. Watch how different kinds of balls drop and bounce. Finally, the exercise will help you get used to some of the animation tools in Maya such as the ones mentioned above.Īs with all animation, getting good reference is the essential first step. Also though, the motion created by the ball may be seen as a somewhat primitive precursor to a moving character, making the bouncing ball exercise a useful preparation for a walk cycle. The bouncing ball demands an adherence to some of the key principles of animation, namely timing, spacing, weight and squash and stretch. It’s an exercise which may initially seem simple but which is an invaluable first step. So the main outcome of this first tutorial is an animated bouncing ball. This month we’ll focus firstly on setting some foundations: introducing tools such as the Graph Editor, the Dope Sheet and Motion Trails, and secondly we’ll be using these tools to animate a bouncing ball. I’ll be using Maya but the same principles and techniques can easily be transferred over to whichever package you prefer. This tutorial is going to be the first in a series which will take you through the first steps of animating in CG. caveAcademy_introToAnimationInMaya_resources.The following zip file contains all the Maya scene files and some reference videos.
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