Mike Ricks Animation Blog

Tried to clean up some more of the noise but it seems more difficult than intended but decided to move on nonetheless Here is some torso twisting Here i cleaned up the before and after of the whole animation and added an infinity curve to both ends. then heres cleaning up the right shoulder

Didnt do too much yet besides clean up the legs a bit to look better

So picking up where i left off. Working on cleaning up the Hip X rotation them working on the upper torso in general. I like that i can select multiple sections and you can get like a nice curve as programs i played with before didnt have that without distorting the whole model. Next he was taking the curves for the torso and and shrinking them with the region to tool to help cut down noise from the head and neck but it still looks a bit weird. Now moving on to Y rotation staring with the chest. smoothing it out and making sure its mirrored on both sides by copying value and changing from negative to positive and vice versa And here is the result so far. i need to clean up the hips a bit as it still seems a little janky compared to the tutorial.

Okay picking up where i left off which was during the summer i was almost done with the Hips and legs module Heres the playblast where i left off. the foot is a little awkward at the end of its cycle i spent time cleaning up the cycle so it felt nicer Learned how to copy the animation then stagger it to fit. then finish off the mirroring

Okay so im at the point where im effectively done because the squash and stretch for the ball and tail seem to be broken im pretty sastisfied with the end result so proceeded to render it. at my present settings it took about 5 hours to fully render and i dont know if i can spare that time again this weekend but if i have time ill try to refine and re render Playblast and render

So i went to mess with eh squash and stretch and the controls seemed to break and gave the impression of that there were two spheres the controls fell off but still added a ball that i couldnt remove without deleting whole thing and would still follow the animation so i just had to hide it. Then when i tried to stretch the tail it wont let me set key frames and just leaves it stretched for the whole animation as well. so i think ill just have to leave them out and focus on rendering at this point. I remember you saying that this rig is bad. if i have time i may play with the squirrel rig.

Finished the first run on the tail. from here it will be refining adding more squishing then rendering. The little roll at the end was accidental but i decided to keep it because it looks fun.

This is what i started with over the week I have been focusing on finishing the tail which i should be able to refine over the weekend as well as make the squash and stretch and secondary motion look good on the rest. maybe need to tweak the platforms to move better too.

Messed with some curves to make the arcs feel better. This was the animation i initially worked on the weekend till Tuesday. Spent time working on making the objects move when they are in contact and made the gate drop the ball will have to tail kick it open. And the final animation for the night. adding some squash and stretch and tail movements. The tail is going to take alot of refinement and i hope i can get it done in time.

So i was able to copy the animation for the ball ive been working on over. and i spent the majority of today shortening the frames so they would go alot faster and i feel pretty happy with it for the most part. i just gotta add a before and after scenes I do have the old animation which i can upload later in this area and ill have to do that when i get home. But heres the latest

My first idea on the pass through of this course. my drawing isnt that great so the arcs wont look good but at least i have a start. Also my course didnt seem to want to save first time. something about nodes or data.

And the playblasts in case you need to see those

Pretty much cruised through all the tutorials for principals of animation so ill have plenty of time to refine the ball bounces So this one was all about exaggerating the height of the jump which wasnt too hard to do especially with the animation layers but the second part my file kept crashing so i had to load the second part and i deliberately modified and added a stretch on the jump up as well as the jump down to get some practice. and i think the small changes i made help it look nicely This one was about staging which seems to translate to making nice camera shots during the animation which was the camera sequencer. this took me a whle to figure out but i eventually got it to work and made a couple different shots while it was playing Appeal was pretty simple talking about making sure your poses arent static and characters look more natural it also kept crashing on me what i was trying to look at controls Solid drawing seemed to be lopped in with...

Forgot my drive....again so ill just work on the tutorials which im almost done. Playing with secondary motion and Animation layers. I understand game design uses a lot of layers to help characters interact with player controls I created an Animation layer and i have been adding flapping motion with one arm and a nice trick is keying from 100 percent to 0 to add in the layer without messing with the whole is a nice trick to learn It would be hard to show the minor changes without a video but the second clip will show me how to copy to the other arm. And here is that second layer for the other arm And copying and pasting it over with some minor changes And thats done there. next is exaggeration.

So i inadvertently added all the poses i need to make the animation look better so the next two lessons felt redundant but i watched through them and tried to add some fixes. i tried paying attention to the spine and limbs to make sure everything kind of flowed better. definitaly something ide like to spend mopre time on but i feel like i need to move on. The last lesson of the module concerned making more fluid arcs and curves but when i glanced over the animation. The curves seemed fine enough for me but i did play with a couple. that does complete another module and i should have the other knocked out in a day or so.

Tried to knock out some more work from the two different ball bounces Still seem to struggle with the way the golf ball ends and reworked it couple times and then i ended up adding squash and stretch to both the golf ball and bowling ball. might have over exaggerated the bowling ball. I also added a plane in the side to help contrast the side. Then back to knock out some more tutorials SO basically i just added some more frames inbetweens. again not wanting to spend too much time but i think this is going pretty well.

Started working on the bowling ball animation and from what ive seen it looks like it just wants to drop down as fast as it can and not bounce much so thats what what im trying to do and so far it looks pretty decent. i will still add some bounces here and there and i need to adjust timings as well which seems to be my biggest hurdle but this is more forgiving i think than the golf ball. If possible could i get some feedback from you for both my current WIPS? i feel like im on the right track   Not sure why the bowling ball background is black in this one Then on to the tutorials working on the poses. heres a bit of my interpretation of the blocking for the jump here. dont want to spend too muich time here as i like to move on and get more done. But i am enjoying this so far.

So my flash drive didnt carry over my file but i didnt have much on there anyway so its fine so im starting over again I did sort of pace out what my frames would be this time granted i didnt exactly draw it out like you recommended but i got it to a point where it feels like its bouncing hard but lightly the motion trail doesnt seem to be matching up exactly as its as the graph but i feel likes its coming along nicely and should have it knocked out soonish. Might need some feedback from the end im pretty contempt with the stairs part so far. i bet if i smooth out the z axis or shortened it it would look better Decided to at least set up bowling ball. is there a way to increase the size of the balls or just keep it as is? Then i decided to work on my tutorials. Im trying to work on the next pose but maya keeps crashing when i try to do something too sudden and its kind of concerning because if its bugging out now it may become an issue in the ...

Figured i get started on the ball project because i am feeling pretty confident and i also forgot my flash drive with my project Just gonna start on the side and map out all my extremes before i focus on timing and arcs I figured out the Decimals. in the preferences if you change the tick span to two it seems to fix the issue. It doesnt look like it has an additional effect on the animation the project seemed to get out of hand quickly so i think im just gonna redo it. havnt lost too much time but i was able to understand how i should approach it better

Got distracted with work and some other homework so didnt get too much out of this but went ahead and got my jump tutorial set up. basically posed it and got things set up. I picked up the eleven rig from the walking tutorial and that seemed to fix the eye issue. i really like some of the rig controls as programs i used before didnt have a thing where i can just close the hand with one control with is very nice.

Some more overlapping action the 3rd  video seemed to be about cleaning up the graph editor which i have found to be very useful as ive used previous animation programs that did not have extensive graph editors so this is definitely something i can get use to. also i removed the plane because it wasnt doing anything for me any way. Next video and last of module is squash and stretch This part was a lot funner than i thought it would be as since most of the work is already done i can just go in and tweak things here and there and it really doesnt require much effort which is always a plus in my book I know i could probably make this look better and i should but also would like to move on and i got other projects.

While you were lecturing on the ball i went ahead and tried to make a decent animation Timing still feels way off and i think i just needed to lengthen it and spread out the keyframes atleast near the ends. played with squash and stretch too but since i shifeted some things it may have changed the shapes a little bit as well. if i have time i may try to clean it up to have a decent understanding

Back in the saddle. i was still struggling a bit with trying to get the reference image to work so i decided to press on and just study closely the videos as they arent aligned perfectly Starting with a slight adjustment to frame 14 then a subtle adjustment on 27 to add more S curves and add more "Arcs" it was at this point i realized i could just open the reference image close to wrapping up and i had to figure out how to add or remove weighted tangents then i just played with the settings to try and make it feel better but im struggling a little at the end

Spent over two hours on the first lesson of the third module for one the image planes dont seem to be present despite me have the file path editor score the project files. Second the joints on the thing dont seem to be parented to each other so i cant seem to figure out why they are not auto key framing despite the auto key framer being turned on even when i select all and press s I found this very frustrating to try and learn the simple lesson im suppose to be doing. i literally have to press each one and press s. i even reset my maya preferences. has anyone else reported issues like this? ......................... Okay despite the issues i think i found a compromise that may work out. i clicked on the top then second and bottom with shift and made separate key frames which i think i should be able to proceed now. I realize i may face problems like this often. I even work tech support so i should be use to troubleshooting. Also i just realizes he said it at least once...

So to start off the first 3 of the series being timing spacing and arcs. Spacing was talking about really moving the key frames left and rught on the timeframe but its interesting  because ill probably be moving those alot Spacing was all about slowing in and out and its fun to mess with both ways of taking the key handles and stretching and moving them The final bit talking about arcs was mostly about stretching the actual arcs on the graph editors and narrowing the lines on the impacts which gives it a nice impact and arc. Now here the ball would not load for me or would disappear and detach from the handles as soon as i made a change and could not find a solution but i am also testing uploading animation. This does make me a little more comfortable with the graph editor.