I’m a barbie girl, in a boring world!!
Among several options, I wanted to experiment on the gaming side of animation, even considering that is my focus. Reason why I decided to work on the Game Cycle Pack. I most definitely needed to do some math first. Being the original setup at 30 fps (frames per second), the assignment required at least 8 seconds per animation, and having to create 4 different animations, each of them required 240 frames with a 10-frame transition after each one, I ended up with a total of 990 frames.
Initially, I considered even adding an idle break, but I wanted first to set the main poses:
Idle;
Run;
Jump;
Dodge.
Especially in RPG games, we are accustomed to energetic characters, heroes, perhaps, monsters and all sorts of magic creatures, but not this time. For a change, I wanted to depict every parent's worst nightmare, the quintessential bored teenager.
Everyone, meet astrid
project settings
I wanted to have all the material needed in place and easily accessible for Maya, so I set up a specific folder in the project where I stored textures, meshes and video files.
texture mapping
Usually, many prefer to set up the scene as their first step when animating. I personally like to start with the character and build the scene around it. Although, there was something important I needed to do first, and that was checking if the character had already its textured mapped and in place. Luckily for me, I had only to add a few custom textures in the Attribute Editor setting the right folder path:
studio library, animbot & tweenmachine
Studio Library, Animbot and Tween Machine have been valuable assets in building the key poses and breakdowns. To start, I saved the character’s initial A-pose and relative mirror table in the studio library, poses that I used on different occasions as a starting pose for the subsequent animation. I had to use, at times, the Animbot mirror tool, as the mirror table did not always work as expected. Working on the main poses, I finally had 23 main poses and breakdowns, including the float pose for the running animation, contact, up, down and passing. There’s no need to say how much these tools help me with the animation. Poses are very different, and despite trying my best to originate a ‘natural’ progression, sometimes I had to rely heavily on tweenMachine to create fluidity.
strike a pose…
idle
For the idle pose, I wanted to convey the character’s boredom by accentuating an almost lifeless movement, a slouchy posture and the eyes half closed. I got the inspiration from the mutant character on Mixamo which has a similar movement speed and stance. To enhance this feeling, I also added a few dramatic pauses between the main and the passing pose. Initially I left her feet parallel to each other, but that looked too static, and I decided to change the position of one of them and rotate it slightly outward. I also slightly bent her knees to give a bit more fluidity to the movement. Using the 12 principles of animation, I exaggerated some traits like bending and pushing the torso forward to underline a sense of imbalance. The character’s weight distribution is purposely uneven, making it look like she might fall over any minute. The loose arms and the subtle swinging movement are meant to accentuate the mood and her imbalance. To make her look less robotic, I had to have her lean on one side.
run
The running poses have been the most challenging to create due to the number of key poses involved. I observed the online tutorial on Canvas explaining and building the main poses:
Contact
Down
Passing
Up
Float
Following the tutorial, I created the main poses as close as possible to the character, and then I exaggerated some of the movements, for example, by having her lean even more towards her side in the contact pose, accentuating foot and toe roll bending to avoid making her look stiff, and I thought that enhancing some subtle movements would give her a more energetic feel, in contrast with other parts of the body that would barely move. For the float pose, I made sure her feet were visibly off the floor as she would jump. There’s a little difference with this one. While usually, in the running pose, the arms are ‘set by opposites’ and clearly on the side of the body, I used the same concept and shifted it forward so they would still follow ‘opposites’ but slightly further than the rest of the body.
contact pose
Float Pose
jump
Traditionally, jumping animations in video game settings are fast-paced and immediate, so I might have been a bit ambitious with this one, as this has been thought to be more theatrical than immediate. I originally followed the ‘Breakdown variation exercise’ from Canvas for the starting poses, using stepped tangents to set the blockouts, then I moved into spline tangents once I added more breakdowns using TweenMachine. I wanted to focus on the anticipation pose, an area where I have always been timid, afraid of ‘squashing’ the character too much or not balancing weights properly and making it look unrealistic. To address this, I slightly pushed the centre of gravity forward with the hips and accentuated the arcs in the torso only on the contact pose, leaving the body in a more natural stance during the anticipation. The difficult part for me was to let both arms hang loose and be led by gravity, avoiding rigidity and unnatural movement. So, I kept the subtle swinging movement and let them follow the ‘natural’ movement of the body, but always ensuring that they followed the leading leg line of action based on opposites. I have been using the feet and toes roll to highlight the shifting of the character’s weight. I kept the same still facial expression as in the other poses as a contrast with the body movement.
dodge
I developed this pose following the ‘Breakdown Variation exercise: The Sequel’ (Sev_Key Poses) from Canvas, as I thought it would be a humorous way for a bored teenager to dodge a bullet. I used the idle pose as a starting point for the dodge animation, as it felt fairly neutral and allowed for an easier transition into the anticipation pose. To anticipate the movement, I had the character leaning on the side where the foot was bearing weight, just enough to prepare for the next passing pose while maintaining the mood of the bored teenager. As with the other main poses (idle, run and jump), I paid close attention to how her feet would respond to the body’s movement. That’s why the transition to the next contact pose always followed a similar pattern: toes, feet and eventually heels with toes rolled upwards. The part that I found most difficult was shifting the weight from one foot to the other between contact poses. There was a brief moment where she seemed ‘weightless’, even if I tried to move the pelvis as close as possible to the foot about to take the weight, so I opted to move the whole upper body towards it. Luckily, the transition was fast and not really noticeable, although I could have done better in positioning her feet more precisely so I didn’t make her look like a contortionist a few times. What can I say? if practice makes it better, I will have many more chances to improve.
