WEEK 2 - Ball and Tail

The second exercise was a simple ball and tail animation with a focus on the principles of follow-through and over-lap. I understand that follow-through and Over-lap are crucial parts of any moving character, anything like a cape or long hair that moves after the character has done his/her key movement can be considered Follow-through...

This is a little character I created. See his cape there? If I was to go ahead and animate this guy (like I intend to one day) I would have to consider the movement of the cape. Follow-through is any movement that happens after the key movement has been done...

It doesn't have to be a cape either, Follow-through can relate to other things like a piece of rope or a characters tail perhaps...

I was doing some research on these principles and came across an excellent tutorial from Digital Tutors on Over-lap and Follow-through. It was really helpful in trying this sort of thing out in 3D...

DIGITAL TUTORS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2wJA9eX3yA

When trying out my own tests on follow-through I was given a rig from my tutor and told to play around with the tail. The rig we were given was a rig of a ball and tail and we were asked to move the ball and then have the tail follow the ball as if it were attached to the ball on a piece of string. To get an idea of how this would work I did a simple test moving the ball across the screen and the ball following it. Here is my result:

As you can see the test was merely to get a better understanding of the principle but as I was doing this I found it very difficult to adapt to the new 3D ways I was being taught. As I have mentioned before in my previous posts, I have been taught in a predominantly 2D way and this new software programe we're using is difficult for me. However this exercise has helped me get to grips with the interface better and I feel that I am picking it up much quicker than I initially expected.

Interaction with an environment

We were given an environment for our ball and tail to jump around. When given this set we were told to think of what type of character our ball is going to be. I chose my ball to have a very bouncy and energetic demeanour so that I could further practise my ball bouncing skills and also have a really interesting character to animate.

Our ball was to interact with the environment in a certain way. I decided my character, being athletic and energetic, was going to jump up the steps really enthusiastically and then reach the top, become overzealous and then fall back down the stairs. These movements and key frames were drawn out in my sketchbook initially (see above) so that I had a rough idea of how it was going to look.

Upon building the scene in Maya I came across a number of problems. Firstly, I had added a deformer to my ball and tail so as to implement some squash and stretch elements to my piece but I found the rotate tool to be somewhat of a thorn in my side with this move. For example, I was rotating my ball several times during the production of this scene but as I was doing so the pivot point moved around the rig erratically and I had some problems detecting it.

I also found making my ball and tail do a 360 degree flip incredibly difficult.

I also sped up the final film so that the movement was more quick but I feel that by doing this some of the movements are too quick and you can barely even recognise what happens at some points.

To conclude I feel that this animation needs some work... a lot of work, and I will get round to it at some point. Ultimately, I have understood the key principles and researched them throughly, however, I do understand that I still have a lot to learn about Maya but I know I am beginning to get the hang of it and this exercise really helped...