Conclusion and Reflection

My animation in my opinion wasn't too bad, but there are a few things wrong with it. The speed of my character, like I've said previously, was a big issue for me. I just couldn't get him to run at a realistic speed because of my error in over populating the dopesheet.

I had to constantly fight errors in the sense of those annoying rotation errors, where I had to use euler filtering on each rotation of the arms. It produced ok results but the arms were still not fully under my control and therefore I feel I could not produce the exact movement I was trying to animate.

I think the rig I used was possibly too basic; it didn't have many capabilities in terms of actual movement which I think was producing those rotation errors. What I mean by that is this rig as far as I've researched can only be used for forward kinematic animation, which is fine, but doesn't possess the smooth and less error prone movement of inverse kinematics. I've used inverse kinematic rigs before and they have no issues with limb rotations as it doesn't really matter what pose the rig was set in, it always moves from its last rotation without its  first transforms interfering with its new transforms. A rig that can blend between the two would have been excellent, but this was the rig that our class was advised to use so it was best to stick to that advice really. Its good for very basic animation, but when you apply movement and rotation it has a tendency to produce unintended results.

Throughout my animation process I have tried to keep a close watch on important animation factors. For example silhouettes; I've made sure that my animations have as strong silhouettes as I could make them have.

The only time I thought I could really show anticipation was in the start where the character is getting ready to jolt up and run. You can see the momentum in this area too when he thrusts up, his momentum starts at the hips and travels up the spine to the shoulders where you can see his body squash a little.

My choice in animation doesn't really have the need for rules of squash and stretch in it, but I have made sure to use those rules when I could, like when the character is tucked in the start position then jolts upright.
I've tried to keep my character looking balanced at all times, making sure his weight is correctly placed across the limbs and his centre of gravity is kept at a point where he doesn't look as if he is going to fall. It was hard though as the videos I've seen of Olympic sprinters shows them lifting their feet off the around at the same time in some parts.

All that being said, I feel I've learnt a lot from this assignment and particular animation assignment. I will be more aware of my dopesheet layout, as well as going about movement in a mathematical way of thinking. For example, next time I do a run or walk cycle, I think I'll research or record myself running or walking and note down how long it takes to move so many feet, then set up those values in Maya's grid units so I can more accurately animate.

I am most interested in animation within this course, and even though my results on this assignment were not great, It has only strengthened my interest and enthusiasm in it and I will be doing many self appointed animations to bring the quality of work up in the future.

Final outcome

Here is the video of my animation as its final cut. I will post about my reflections and conclusion on it soon.

Front view render:

Side view render:

Perspective view render:

Real time speeds

This module requires that we animate in 24 frames per second (real time), and therefore I set it to that playback speed in Maya. Maya already recognises that real time is 24 frames per second and so there was not many settings the required changing.

After animating and putting the final tweaks into my animation I realised that my animation after the starting blocks was too slow in some parts and too fast in other to look realistic. To try and correct this I used the 'Dopesheet'. I spent a fair few hours trying to select and move the keyframes left and right to speed up and slow down the animation. The result was better than what I had to begin with, but it was still looking quite jerky and I couldn't figure out how to resolve the issue. The only way to do it that I knew of was to use the dopesheet.

I had been taught to make sure when I move part of the rig to keyframe all of it so that on the dopesheet you could see thick black bars across all of the different parts of the rig. It was great advice as it makes it easier to see what is happening, and makes sure that no one part moves randomly by accident due to movement further down the line in the time slider.

I think though, what with trying to correct random arm rotations and such, that I over complicated the dopesheet needlessly. By this time though It was far too confusing to sort out at the end and clean up / simplify.

Something that I'm definitely going to keep watch on next time I animate.

The below image illustrates what I mean by over complicating the dopesheet. When I look at it I feel I've made it too intimidating to try and clean up without destroying my animation keyframes.