CAGD Blog

 This week I got the animation of my raptor walk done, at least to a point that I tried to follow all the critique I got from it on Monday. I mostly did a lot of work for my capstone class, aka 495. I'm one of two animators on the team and since we're nearing the end of the semester, I have quite a bit of work cut out for me.   This first animation is called the "Shake". My producer and designer said they wanted it to feel eerie, and off putting, so as any sane person dose, I made myself super chilly and recorded my reactions. By then exaggerating it by a bit, I got it to an acceptable place that both of my superiors liked.  The second animation I worked on this week for the class was an approach cycle, which was a bit more difficult due to the tendrils. I had to spend the majority of time working with those to make sure they flowed the way my designer envisioned. The vibe for this part was supposed to feel creepy and slow paced, so I kept it all in stepped so there ...

      To start off this blog, I would like to mention that I transferred my Duckbob Steering card to my other teammate since he was completing the other Duckbob animations, and we figured it would be easier to implement that way.       This sprint I completed a few animations as well as making another creature for the game. After talking back and forth with the designer and the producer I got the animation for La Llorona "shaking" to a desirable place. This part was a bit of a challenge due to having to constantly tweak keys and the little amount of reference available.  At first I tried to look up references online but there weren't enough that were matching what the vision was, so I took matter's into my own hands and acted out how I thought the motion should go.  This is the end result;    Next item of business, a couple of sprints ago I mentioned that I had modeled a creature that was on the backlog, since I had a litt...

 This week I continued to make adjustments to my Raptor Walk cycle based off of peer review and feedback. I think the part I was most struggling with while working on this was how the neck --> should move, and after a few research videos (I played a game with dinosaurs and watched their animation cycles) I think I got it right? I'll be asking my peers again this week for their opinion.  Here's the link to the video!   I have started on the run cycle but it's mostly a lot of trial and error since I kept having to readjust it from the base (walk), I'll be posting the video on that one next week.   

 This week I did another walk cycle,  A DINOSAUR. I originally wanted to do an action sequence with the raptor but decided to test the rig out before hand, do a walk, run, and attack motion and then try out a shot scene.  The dragon walk helped a lot when it came to understanding the spine movements of a quadruped, which is pretty rough honestly.  I based this walk heavily on a chicken so this video came in clutch; https://youtu.be/z3FvkwGcWtU?si=fLPte6Qo8zOnAqYR    Here's my first pass at the walk cycle!  Link: https://youtu.be/23qGVLv31LY  

       This sprint I finished a character from start to finish. Our last creature character, La Llorona was built and completed this sprint, and she was a learning curve for me. I started building her within Zbrush, based off of the turnaround given by my team's artist. This one was more of a challenge then my last few character's because she's covered in cloth and clothing so I had to figure out how to make that work. I started in Zbrush and quickly realized it was not working out how I wanted it to, so after some research I landed on this program called Marvelous Designer, originally made for fashion designers to mock up clothing prototypes in a 3D space, adopted by 3D artist.     Luckily the character didn't need any extravagant clothing so after a few introduction tutorials I got a mock-up of La Llorona's clothing, and imported it into Zbrush where I added details.          The most challenging part about the sculpt however...

       This week I continued to work on the last of my Dragon cycle. I finally managed to finish it, hooray! It took quite a bit of watching different dog and lion and bear videos to figure out which one I'd like to portray, and I went with a dog for the hind legs and a bear for the front legs.      Although I didn't get to have critiques done in class this week, I did end up utilizing my class's discord channel and posting a playblast. Luckily, there are quite a bit of regulars who also talk in there so I received a lot of good feedback! It was mostly concerning timing, and shapes of the hindlegs, but otherwise I was set! Of course, there is always thing's I could improve on if I wanted to spend more time on it but I want to move onto another project as the semester comes to an end.  Here's the link to the youtube video of my completed walk cycle!  Dragon Walk Cycle