Wasp Attack Animation

This is our third animation principles exercise in as many weeks, the last before our main unit task. The aim was convey two different emotions and the transition between them. Again, I decided to work in 3D, so I could play a little.

We were asked to concentrate on certain qualities for this, to give the character its own thought process. It took me ages to decide on two emotions and a cause. I didn’t want to add in props, because they would require animating too. I already knew people were going to approach theirs with seeing/overhearing something off-screen, so I wanted to have him affected by something a bit different.

That’s basically when I thought, ‘what might the character be able to see near himself, but I cannot?’. Then I thought about how ridiculous people look when trying to deflect a fly or a wasp.

I instantly knew there was potential for the animation to look misleading though.

Sure enough, the result can be quite misleading. It does indeed look like he is wafting a fart, at least at the beginning. I decided I wasn’t too worried about this, after laughing at my screen during a playblast.

Critical feedback – I didn’t really receive any when we presented them all on the Monday morning. Aside from the heckles and sniggering, the actual feedback on the animation was quite positive. I’d say problems it has include some of the slow-down during wafts. Although contrasting speeds are good, it looks a bit unnatural in mine towards the end.

Video Reference – it helps.

After last weeks exercise, I had decided working with video reference was a good idea. I tried to over-act a little with it, although I only performed a single take. Some of the tips which I learnt in the our Acting Workshop today could of been pretty useful here. Oh, and ignore the fancy dress costume.

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Next Week

Our next exercise is the main one for this unit. It involves animating to a short sound clip for this month’s 11 Second Club competition. Although we are allowed to use last month’s sound clip if we wish, it cannot be entered into the competition. More on that next week.

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