Project: Steps Climbing and Jumping Animation

This is my Playblast video of my Joe Rig's step and jump animation:

Making the steps became surprisingly simple after going through the walk cycle as both are very similar, with the exception of elevation change as the step progresses. Making the jump, on the other hand, was fairly hard but still manageable. I decided to make my jumping animation similar to a standing-broad jump as I am very familiar with the keyposes (since us students do standing-broad jumps a lot back in primary and secondary school).

Project: Walk Cycle Animation

These are Playblast videos of my Joe Rig walk cycle animation at three different angles:

Making these animations weren't too tough for me since I got prior experience in dealing with walk cycle animations. Regardless, making them were still tedious and hard, especially considering how the rig has no neck and very thin limbs. The lack of a neck make the animation appear unrealistic and make me skeptical to animate the head. The thin limbs jerk a lot in the earlier stages of animating, forcing me to do frame-by-frame keyframing at times. Still, I am proud of my animation.

This is the reference I used:

Project: Character Sketch Design and Appearance

These are the final sketches of my character, Jaden Highland.

Due to limitations in free-hand drawing, and my lack of skill in it, I had to modify the pictures slightly with Adobe Photoshop to show the character's full-body.

Description:
As mentioned in my previous post, Jaden wears a blindfold despite not being blind. Hence, its implementation is crucial in the character design. One thing to note is that Jaden was never meant to be feminine appearance-wise, hence she was given a somewhat bulky but mostly athletic built to fit in with the universe she was in. This can also be seen in her arms, where muscles are barely visible, along with the width of her body and her proportions being similar to a male (wide shoulders, thinner hips). However, her hair was kept long and flowing to preserve her feminism. She was given a revealing, strapless top to represent her vulnerability as, though powerful she may be, she was still young, immature and mortal.

When it comes to color, her blindfold and hair will be black to represent the gloominess and darkness of the storyline and situation she was thrown in. Her top apparel will be made dark purple to display her capability to control both Light and Dark (Blue + Red = Purple).

These are previous sketches done before I finalized the design of her head and face.

To be frank, I was already satisfied with my first sketch but I decided to continue exploring other possible facial features. I tried shortening her hair, making her face chubbier and skinnier but ultimately, my first design was chosen as it fits her character best.

Inspirations

Illidan Stormrage

Warcraft Franchise

Inspired Jaden's blindfolded appearance and her dual powers (Light and Dark. Good and Evil).

 Starkiller a.k.a Galen Marek

Star Wars Franchise

Inspired Jaden's Reverse Grip fighting style

Character Concept

 Adobe Flash Drawing of Jaden Highland

Project: Character Design

Name: Jaden Highland 
Tagline: Mistress of both Light and Dark
Catchphrase: "I am not blind!"
Brief Introduction: Jaden was a simple, 20 year old young lady, forced into maturity when her life came crumbling down in the midst of war.

Story
In a fantasy universe filled with mythical creatures, aliens and magic lives Jaden Highland, a human female and daughter of a pair of war heroes. Living her entire life without a father, Jaden was forced to look after herself throughout her childhood, though she still maintained her childish demeanor, constantly playing pranks on her triplet siblings. Though young, she was able to master the use of magic naturally, going so far as to be able to control both Light and Dark magic. She despised the occupation of an enemy faction, the Cultists, within her home planet, never trusting them or their leaders. She could do little about it, as her people, the Salvagers, lost the war.

However, she was forced into maturity when she was the only survivor of an assault upon her family by the government. Vengeful, she secretly formed her own rebellion, which she inevitably leads despite her youth. Forming new alliances and fighting with Light and Darkness on her side, she strives for a better future for her people. Her enemy was an aged man, known to many only as Dark Viper and the one who slaughtered her family. Little did she realize that Dark Viper had a connection to her past.

Driving Force
The death of her parents made her realize how terrible the toll war has taken upon her people. She wished to end the occupation and restore the Salvagers to their former glory, going so far as to risk her own life in the process. She also wished to avenge her family by hunting down and slaying Dark Viper, although she soon learned he was her seemingly deceased father, the only thing staying her blade from ending his life. Upon uniting the entire world against the Cultist, she made one final stand against them and defeated them, though the cost was her own father. Her ultimate sacrifice was her former life, as she gave it up to become the new Queen of the Salvagers, since they desperately needed a new ruler.

Traits
Appearance:
1) One of her key features is her blindfold, which she always wear and was rarely seen taken off. Due to her naturally strong magical potential, her eyes give out a blue glow as bright as a flashlight. To avoid blinding others, she wear the blindfold to block the glow. Fortunately, her glowing eyes allows her to see through one solid object, namely her blindfold, so she is not truly blind.

2) She is noticeably tall, towering an average man and capable of doing things that are otherwise difficult for an average woman to do, such as reaching out for tall objects or overpowering a man in combat.

3) Jaden has mastery over Light and Dark magic, something which she displays by causing her katana to glow either blue, red or purple. Due to this, she is able to control good and evil magic and allows her to take down almost any adversary.

4) Her katana stands out from most in that it has a carving on the blade, saying, "I love you". It was unknown to her where the carving comes from but it was then revealed that her father personally carved it for her mother in their youth. This carving is the one thing keeping Dark Viper's sanity in check.

Behaviour:
1) Despite the situation she was in, Jaden maintained a playful, sarcastic and somewhat childish demeanor. She happily jokes around with her fellow rebels and tries to keep everyone in high spirit. However, rather ironically, she was rarely seen smiling. Only during combat or after traumatizing experiences will she get serious.

2) She was one of the only known warriors of her time to fight in the Reverse Grip fighting style, that is holding her katana in the grip with the blade facing backwards. Regardless, she fight as gracefully as any warrior and was able to best many other warriors in combat.

3) She was also very humble, almost unnaturally as said by one of her fellow rebels. She never claim to be a great warrior despite her unique fighting style and she especially refuses to be acknowledged as a great leader, even though she brought the Salvagers to victory. Regardless, she accepts almost all praises given to her by her friends.

Short Dialogue
Jaden: What are you looking at?

Rebel: Your blindfold miss. Are you blind or something?

Jaden: Yeah sure. I'm blind and I can see perfectly well that you have three rings on your right index finger, one of them ruby and the other two sapphire.

Rebel: What? How'd you know that?

Jaden: I am not blind! I can see through my blindfold.

Reed: Don't listen to her soldier. The blind beauty can't see anything.

(Jaden grabbed a nearby food and threw it into Reed's face)

Jaden: Hah! How'd you like that?

Reed: Mmm. Tasty actually.

Jaden: You want some more?

Week 4: Weight Shift Animation

This is a video of a weight shift animation exercise done:

Like the Big Dog, I had difficulty making it appear as if gravity and weight is being applied. Regardless, with a bit of up-and-down movement, this was achieved and added in an extra movement in the shoulder, knee and head for the sake of realism.

Week 4: Big Dog Animation

 i)        If engineered or programmed badly, BigDog would fall over. Watch the full video again, and describe how BigDog’s legs move while walking– ie. what is the sequence of leg movements for one complete step? Use the terms BL, BR, FL, and FR for the back-left, back-right, front-left and front-right legs.

     The Big Dog starts by moving its FL foot and BR foot simultaneously at the direction it was being pushed. This was done to maintain balance and to prevent the whole body from tipping over. After one step, the opposite legs (FR and BL) will move and this sequence will repeat until it regained its balance. As it raised its leg, the body raised slightly and dropped when the leg touches the ground. Needless to say that body is tilted due to gravity pulling it down as it lost its balance.

ii)       Explain how this sequence of movements manages to balance BigDog’s body weight.

      The moving leg acts as a form of a support for the body as the angle and the impact upon the ground stops the body from tipping over immediately. Hence, the lack of balance reduces with each step, eventually coming to a halt when balance is retained.

iii)     Look at BigDog_kick_slow_motion.mov. Draw a storyboard of BigDog stabilising itself after being kicked.

You should draw the key poses. You don’t need to draw well – but you must show the leg positions and the body rotations around the X, Y and Z axes for each key pose.

Starting from the left, the first keypose is when the Big Dog is standing still. The second keypose is when the one frontal leg and the opposite back leg is raising. The body rotated  and raised slightly and, though mechanical, the legs move in the arc. The rest of the legs remain still. On the third keypose, the moving legs touches the ground and the body lowered slightly. The second and third keyposes repeat with the body rotation gradually reducing. Eventually, the final frame would be the first keypose to show that it has regained balance.

The following are a pair of videos displaying a Big Dog model animated to resemble the original video:

Making the animation is deceptively hard as I made a total of 7 retries. The difficulty mostly comes from showing the weight in the movement of Big Dog and to show the lack of balance. This was achieved through rotation and up-and-down movement of the body. I am ultimately proud of my work as I worked very hard for it.

Week 3: Rigging

The following are screenshots of poses taken from the finished rig model:

Pose 1

Pose 2

Pose 3

Reverse Foot Lock

Other Screenshots

Rigging was a lot tougher than I ever expected and not to mention extremely tedious. I now have a new-found respect for 3D modelers. I learn a lot from the exercise, such as how to create our own attributes and controls, along with binding the skeleton to the model. These would be very useful in making our own 3D models and rigging it for animation. Pretty much sums up the saying, "Hard work always pays off.".

I faced a lot of difficulty in the rigging despite how straightforward the tutorial was. The tutorial never mentioned that the solution for IK handlers needs to be set to rotation, so when I was doing Pole Vectors, an error occurred and it took me a while to be able to find a fix. Also, weight painting was especially hard and tedious, especially considering how consistent testing is the only way to find out if the model works as intended. Ultimately, my model is somewhat faulty but, as seen above, still capable of posing. Majority of the faults were on the arms and especially the legs (the leg had difficulty bending).

Rigging was really a new experience for me, even though I've rigged a model on IN3D previously. Regardless, that model was simple in comparison to this bipedal one. I know I will return to the tutorial should I ever need to rig a model again.

Week 1: Cow Body

The following are screenshots of the progress of the body of the cow model:

Doing the body model was much harder than expected but the tutorial helped me get through it. It also showed me several ways to make a bipedal character, cartoonic or realistic. One such way is to use nothing but a cube with a preplanned amount of subdivisions to roughly create the character's shape before going into detail. I also learned how to connect multiple models together, something which I had no knowledge of previously as I relied on grouping for the most part.

Week 1: More Spiderman Poses

Here are two extra poses I made for the Spiderman rigged model:

This first pose is not based on any picture or the sorts, rather it is simply how I'd imagine he would pose while getting ready to fight or while observing an enemy. This pose was obviously hard to do due to the lack of references but I am honestly rather proud of it. I tried to apply as much weight as I can for the thigh and I made heavy amounts of adjustments to his spine, feet and fingers. I screwed up with the neck though and I tried fixing it. Alas, I failed but this error is otherwise unnoticeable.

Now, this second pose isn't actually Spiderman's pose (rather, it is Wolverine of the X-men) but I actually wanted to try this rather cool pose. This pose is inspired by one of the X-men movie posters (forgot which movie). The claws were surprisingly difficult to model to make it seem like it is sharp and of the right length. The rest of the pose was rather simple and I made small changes to the spine, chest, knee, feet and hands. Not to mention the head and the arms, along with the elbow. Overall, I like this second pose and I am also proud of it.

Week 2: Character Poses

These are some poses I gave to a rigged model downloaded from the internet, based on several images found on Yahoo.

Making this pose is surprisingly difficult as the model itself is very thin, unlike the more muscular character in the image. The expression of the character was fairly difficult to do as I had no idea how the character's face controls were supposed to work but alas, I made a close resemblance. The arms, as simple as it looks, is actually the toughest part of this pose to make, along with the shoulders. As the character is feeling tense, the shoulder needs to be raised but not too much to avoid exaggeration. The arms need to be bent properly with the wrist not being too high or too low to display anger. Clenching or the fist was fairly simple in contrast. In addition, the spine was given a curve to make the character appear more alive. As the lower half of the character's body was not revealed, I made a little extra by making the model kneel.

Unlike the previous one, this one is far more feminine. The arms, face and body curve proved to be little trouble. Initially, the model's right hand wasn't able to reach the floor like the woman on the image. However, after tweaking the auto stretch feature on the wrist, I managed to get it touch the floor. In addition, I reduced the size of the smile to make the model more "cool" and calm rather than sad. Below is a screenshot of how it looked like before it touches the floor.

Other than that, the lower portion of the model was especially hard to create as we are only given one angle to model it from so the front and back view had to be made based purely on guessing or imagination. I made a lot of adjustments to the knees to display weight, which is also very difficult but I did my best.

Another feminine pose. This one was made rather quickly as I was beginning to get familiar with the rig controls. Still, I had difficulty, especially with the legs. I actually had fun creating the model's facial expression as I always liked the idea of a confident looking character with a cheeky smile. Though the image does not really show such a smile, it was pretty close and I personally think a cheeky smile looks better on the model. Other than that, I had little difficulty in this pose compared with the other two.

Week 2: Spiderman Pose

These are screenshots of Spiderman's rig in his unique pose. Posing was a lot harder than I ever expected and I know well enough what to expect in the future in posing a model.