My final animation is a 30 second or so animation about a robot that really wants a lava lamp. The premise is that the robot is bored playing with the toy truck, but then he sees the lava lamp. He wants it, so he tries to get it. First, he tries to climb books, but is unsuccessful. Then, he tries to balance on a ball, but rolls right past the shelf. Finally, he tries riding his toy car off a ramp made from books onto the shelf, but he just barely misses and knocks into the shelf, causing the lava lamp to fall over. Then, the child whose room it is runs into the bedroom, slamming the door shut. This causes the lava lamp to fall and break, and the toy robot collapses in frustration and anger.
Here is my storyboard:
I used many principles of animation. Among them are anticipation, arc, exaggeration, and appeal. I designed the robot model and book model myself, and borrowed models for the desk, door, car, and lego man. I also borrowed sound effects and music from the public domain.
Here is my final video project, titled iWantRobot:
Difficulties, regrets, and frustrations I had included not being able to render my final project because I couldn't find a free program that consolidated hundreds of png frames for each frame in time for the due date. I have the rendered images, but no software capable of combining the images. Also, all of the action seems to be in fast motion. It would benefit from everything being generally slowed down. Rendered image:
This project's animation was inspired by the game Slime Rancher.
It's in early access on Steam and it follows the adventure of an inter-galactic farmer who runs a ranch that takes care of blob-like creatures like slimes. The player has a gun-like item called a Vacpack that can either suck objects or slimes in or shoot them out. The player is responsible for feeding their slimes fruits, veggies, and chickens in order to keep them happy. When the slime is fed, they poop out a plort which the player can exchange for money to buy new corrals or toys for their slimes. Some screenshots from the game:
As you can see in the 2nd image, if the slimes get too hungry or there are too many in one cage they'll start trying to escape by hopping on top of each other. That's the concept of my animation. The mo-cap person kicks the slimes that are trying to escape back into their corral, then shoots strawberries into the cage to feed them, and one slime creates a pink plort.
Here is the storyboard:
Here is a picture of one of my slime models:
It's based on one of the original slime models from the alpha release of the game, the pink slime:
This is my submission for the Maya Dynamics Rube Goldberg animation. The following is a story board of the animation:
The five discreet components to the Rube-Goldberg machine are: the first red ball, the first ramp and axel, the second ramp and axel, the second ball, and the glass of water.
Here is the final animation:
And this is the animation shot from a distance where you can see each part interacting:
This is a simple path animation of a unicycle going through an obstacle course. For simplicity's (and time's) sake I did not animate the wheel or pedals, as similar animation techniques were used in previous projects. The following is a short storyboard of the animation:
The first principle of animation I used was slow-in, slow-out. This can be seen in the acceleration and deceleration of the unicycle in the beginning and ending frames. The second principle I used was follow through. As the unicycle picks up or loses speed, the seat of the unicycle pulls away or towards the unicycle's center of gravity. For example, when the unicycle picks up speed to ram the barrier, the seat is angled back about 20 degrees. When the unicycle is moving very slow, almost at a stand still, it is angled only 5 degrees. The third principle I used was anticipation when the unicycle slows down as it spots the barrier; unfortunately, I believe the effect is diminished by a lack of good framing and timing.
For my rolling ball animation project, I decided to create an original animation. First, I drew out a storyboard. Essentially, I wanted to depict a ball rolling off a table onto the floor, then bumping into a larger ball, and finally that larger ball knocking a cup of water over. (Sorry for the crappy phone camera quality).
For my principles of animation, I employed squash and stretch, anticipation, and framing. The small red ball squashes and stretches when it bounces on the floor and against the larger, heavier ball. The larger ball does not change form as much to indicate that it weighs more, like a bowling ball. I employ a bit of anticipation when the ball can be seen at the ledge of the table, about to fall but not quite falling. I slowed down the movement there to achieve this. Finally, as you can see in my final video, I created a camera to follow the action so that the audience knows where to focus their attention.
Below are three different angles of the events:
After some adjustments, this is the final animation with camera framing:
I had intended to texture the other ball, the cup, and the floor, but Maya actually started crashing as soon as I opened Hypershade. Going forward, I'll definitely be using a stronger computer that doesn't crash and lose all my saved work every time I go to texture something :( As far as other things that need fixing, I know the red ball's squash and stretch animation looks a little funky, but I wasn't sure where exactly the problem was occurring. The movement could definitely be more realistic though.
For the plane model project I decided to go with the book's plane modeling tutorial. Here are two of the reference pictures used:
Here are some screenshots from that process:
For my major changes, I wasn't really sure if that was supposed to pertain only to the model or in general (as in do animations count). I'm not really that visually creative, so I could only think of simple changes to the model such as to the shading/texturing and in the proportions of the plane. Additionally, I added a sky background and animated the plane. I also added ambient lighting to imitate the light of the sun (since the playblast tends to look a bit drab). Unfortunately, the ambient lighting doesn't show up in the playblast, so check back later for a fully rendered animation. In my animation you can see the propeller spinning as well as flying motion from the plane. It rotates side to side and up and down. The background also moves to give the illusion of movement.
As for improvements to what I've done, first and foremost I need a fully rendered product. I had some issues with it where I wasn't sure if it was running into errors or taking a long time, and I ran out of time to figure it out. Additionally, when animating I wasn't anticipating how slow the playblast would be in comparison to how the animation looks in Maya (about half speed), so this animation is pretty boring because the plane is moving so slowly. I also would change the upward and downward motion of the plane because the movements are jerky and odd.
This is the Playblast of the Solar System assignment as directed by the textbook:
My next step was to implement changes. The first thing I did was give the sun a texture to look sun-like. I gave Earth a texture to mimic waves, since the planet is blue because of water. I tried to give Jupiter and Mars more realistic textures, but they didn't turn out so great. Next, I adjusted the planets' orbits to scale to how far (in degrees) each planet moves over the course of two Earth years. Of course, the planets still move in a circular orbit rather than an elliptical one, so this isn't entirely accurate, but now, for example, Mercury makes 8 rotations around the sun in the time Earth makes 2 rotations. Finally, I adjusted each planet's individual rotation around its own axis. They are scaled to the course of 4 earth days.
Here is a video showing Jupiter's rotation around its own axis, as scaled to 4 Earth days:
Here is a video showing Mars's rotation around its own axis, as scaled to 4 earth days. Mars's days are only one hour longer than Earth's, so the rotational amount is comparable (I included a video of Mars rather than Earth for ease of visualization).
