animation

overview 

for the first week of the module we were tasks to create a professional game trailer in groups of two to three. I then got into my group of two and had to test a rig out that I wanted to use. I then started working with tom, my partner on what the trailer would be. we then came up with the idea that the trailer would be based in a post apocalyptic world were nukes have destroyed most of the planet and have mutated animals into savage beasts. our trailer would play out as soldiers in there camp just talking and patrolling when all of a sudden a horde of monster come out of nowhere and have a big fight, monster being shot down and soldiers getting ripped to bits. after this is over one solider remains around bodies, as he walks of the hand of one comes out of the floor and the trailer ends.

rig auditions

we were first asked to find a rig we wanted to use, using creative crash I found a rig of a solider that looks a little like a psycho.

Idle pose

stance pose

breathing

walk

character bio

Name: Nandos Max

before the nukes went off max worked at nandos, a famous chicken shop thus why they call him nandos. he was at work when the first nuke went off which caused a pan to hit him in the head, sending him crazy. nandos  appears to be always quiet and calm, walks around slowly and takes his time but when a fight comes along he becomes mentally unstable and bloodthirsty. He looses control and screams when he kills anything like a baby with a new toy. not the leader type but when surrounded and backed into a corner you would want Nandos max on your side.



Scenes

My first scene was to animate a horde of lizard that are coming up to the base. I first went and tried to find a monster Ring I can animate. after looking round I found a rigged I like from this link http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/animus_rig-beta.
the rig is a lizard creature that would be the main enemy's in the animation

the first thing to look into is how a lizard moves. on you tube I found may videos on lizards moving. for my scene i wanted to to make the lizards more aggressive when running were as the lizard in the above video didn't look aggressive at all. I then had to think of a animal that runs quite fast and moves its legs like it was leaping and had a look at cheetahs. I found video on you tube and it shows a cheetahs running in slow motion. this helps due to the fact that you can see every movement in the body and would help me animate the lizard running like this.

 for the movement I wanted the lizard so look like it was leaping through the air, seeing as I think it looked more aggressive. for the leaped I looked at how kangaroos hopped to give me a indication on how the legs would move at the same time and in motion

from watching these videos I wanted to take motions from the kangaroo and the cheetah and merge them together.


from this I started playing around with my rigs legs and match them to the cheetah in the video. What I first did was put the legs in a stance position and bent them a little to show the pressure is being pushed from the thigh into the feet. this will show that the lizard is getting ready the push its body weight from the floor and leap forward

the next step was to show the legs pushing up together to give of a leaping motion, much as a kangaroo does.

the the motion of the legs in the air fully up

after I got these motions in I made a short test video to see how it would look

from the initial test I am quite pleased with the movement, its what I want it to look like  but its still a bit rough and needs tweaking. From this I then went into the graph panel

as I can see form the chart the red line indicates the legs movement. they looks rectangular and rigid so what I have to do is smooth out the curves to give the movement a more smoother and realistic look

after a few tweaks i smoothed out the movement and then made another test video

I am now happy with the back leg motional as they leap into the air and looks like its aggressively moving forward. next was to start on the from legs of the lizard. to match the back legs I wanted both the front legs to move at the same time and look as though they are pushing off the ground. I then went back and researched into what animals moved with both front legs at the same time. the first one that comes to mind is a horse.

from this video I can see that they don't quite move together at the same time so I would have to put this approach in on the animation. I then thought of looking at gorillas as they use there arms to move quickly

it was quite hard to find a gorilla moving fast but i did manage to find this clip which shows how there using there arms to move and how much they move to gain momentum. after I kept watching these videos I started to animate the front arms.

from my first attempt I have tried to make it look as though the arms are pushing up from the floor to show the creature gaining momentum and leaping but trying to match the back legs. after this rough copy I went in and tried to smooth out the animation.

with smoothing it in the track editor it looks a lot better. I moved the arms up a little to show strength in pushing off the floor. I also tilted the wrists a bit more and moved the arms ford to make it look like the lizard is gaining some grip on the floor.

with the legs done I then had to start matching the body movement with the legs.

with the body I have made the back part of the body move up and down with the legs instead of staying stiff. I then moved the front part of the body down to match the front arms as with the cheetah video it shows when a animal is moving fast there body will tit a little forward. with the tail I went in and moved it with the motion of the animal and made it swing around freely. I also moved the head around a little but that's in the next part of my scene.

for my second scene I wanted to zoom into the lizard head and show it aggressively roaring. I first went to look at animals such as lions and see the move movement in there faces and muscles.

this gave me a idea of the head movement when the animal is roaring. the problem with this is a lizards head is different from I lions so I had to find something that looks like a lizard and roars. I stumbled onto the idea of looking at Godzilla seeing as that looks like a lizard

with this animation i found it shows I need much neck movement in the model but not much widening of the jaw like a lion seeing as a lizard cannot do that. I then went in and made a test roar

from this test I wanted the lizard to first start off turning his head to the left, preparing the roar and starts roaring all the way till he looks right. at the moment it looks like he head is twitching is some parts so I am going to have to smooth that out and want to show more jaw movement as he preparing for the roar.

from this video I can see that the roar is much more smoother, and I have made the jaw vibrate a little as he is roaring to show the power of the roar. the next part was to add textures and a environment to see how it would look

there's still the issue of the monster not moving, what I did was animating him moving along to show movement. I then added a camera and attached it to a spline so it would focus on the lizards face as it is moving froward

the next part of this scene is to just show the legs of the lizards running together to give it a bit of a horde effect.

what I did was create a camera and rendered through that like my previous scene.this part would be the start of my seen to see a close up of the creatures, when editing the video I am going to cut out a little of the start as they look still for a moment whereas I want them running. the next scene after this would be a perspective view from above.

it was now time to combine all the scenes together in Sony movie maker. I carefully put each part of the film together

after I had done this it was time to add sound. the first sound I wanted was a horde of footsteps so I went and tried to find a sound file. from here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW5GlAPnF5M I found the sound of a group of horses running and decided to test that

the sound is a little of for the feet so I'll have to teak with that. the final part of this scene is the big roar. I started looking at animals that roar. realising lizard hiss more than roar I went back to my idea of Godzilla and found a sound clip of his roar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhTOjDXAqXg

I fell that the roar fits perfectly with the lizard and that this is a good scene to start with. I added a little motion blur at the start with the movement of the monsters.



the next scene would be me animating the main character nando. in the scene nanados is running away and runs round a corner. he leans up against the wall heavily breathing when a body fly to the floor from the corner he just came from. the guy screams help me to nandos and raises his arm but all of a sudden gets dragged back by a creature. then nandos runs out and starts shooting.

the first part of my scene was to get my human rig and make it run while holding a gun. I started looking at the movement of the body when holding something and rushing.

in this video of the game division I have found at 7;20 a scene of him running while holding a gun. at looking at the physic it seems while holding a heavy gun the body is semi hunched and the arms swing a bit from carrying the gun.

this video is quite handy as it is in slow motion. It helps me with were to position the weapon when someone is moving with one. it also shows hows the body is hunched over while looking into the gun. the legs seem to move lightly side ways and crouched as well.


from looking at these videos I went and tried to make a running cycle with nanados holding a gun

from looking at pictures I first put my rig into stance mode with holding the gun.

the looking back at the sliders running I tried to re create that motion

this was just a stating point for the running i've tried to keep the legs lightly crouch and the body lent over. i need to tweak it a bit more for the legs to be a smother motion then i would start on the upper body motion. instead of just running i thought of the idea of giving him a limp to show that he injured.

after some tweaking to this I am starting on the top part of the body i.e. the shoulders

working on the leg a bit more I made it a bit easier to see the limp in his leg left to show a injury. then I moved the hips to go alone with the limping. I also made the shoulders swing a little to correspond to the movement.

this would be the final rendered part of my scene that shows him running with a injury to cover. the next part was to show him against the was heavily breathing like he is in shock

from this video of a breathing animation I looked at how the body moved. analysing it shows that the shoulders move up and down with the chest so i tried to put that into my animation

n this quick animation i tried to mimic the breathing animation. i moved the shoulders up and down but with the body made it move forward and backward a tiny bit which makes him look like he is breathing heavily. just a few tweaks to it now such as the right shoulder seems to be off a little.

this video i made the shoulder not go up so high. i made the head move up and down to show him trying to catch his breath. I then extended the scene to make it longer and show more animation



the next part of this scene is to show a soldiers falling down then reach out to nanado asking for help, then he gets dragged away. the first thing i did was look at falling animations

this video contains quite a few videos of people falling. what i've found from it is that when the body is falling it seems the upper body hits the floor first, the arms also seem to fly out like a defence mechanism. form looking at these I tried to animate.

I started off buy putting my rig in a pose as if hes about to drop.

with the fall animation I looked at how the arms would move, they come forwards but stay bent in most videos i've seen as they are panicking the try and stop the face hitting the floor. I also turned to body a bit so the model lands on the left arm more

I've speed up the falling process to show the weight of the person, I also move the arks a little quicker as if he is pancaking the next part will be the model reaching out to nanados for help

form this I want to show the solider looking up and reaching out. at the moment its a bit fast so ill slow it down and I am also going to put finger movement into the hand that's reaching for help

i have slowed to down quite allot and added finger movement as if he reaching out for help in pain. moving the head a little as well to show help saying help me. to Finnish this scene I have to animate the fallen solider being dragged back from the corner he came

first part was to get the dragging at the right speed. in this video. so i keep messing around with the speed of the pull. i also need to make to arms move and if he is trying to grab onto the floor, slow down the pull to show that

I slowed down the dragging a little to show the animation of the arms, the arms start from clasping for help to trying to grab the floor.


to add sound I used a voice recorder and used my own voice for parts of the scene. in the running part I want him to mean about his leg to show that it is injured.

making it a little sorter in the animation helped a little and i just need to add footsteps with it. the next part was to rerecord my self heavily breathing. then the next part would be the solider falling down. i got a house mate of mine to fall on the floor (there was pillows) to record the sound. with the \"help me" I broke it up into two parts to make it feel as though he is exhausted. for the last bit i just screamed for as long as I could as he getting dragged away and made a dragging sound with my suitcase as it seems quite I went and found a background war noise from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwAkkIbRbRE which helped create a better atmosphere.

the next part was to edit it all together in Sony Vegas. I had to put the sounds on different layers due to the fact that some noises were quieter then others.

after this was done and all completed i had finally finished my third scene


my final scene was to show nandos go a bit crazy and start shooting recklessly, hen show some lizard dying. there one lizard he keeps shooting but missing and is getting closer. as his last bullet goes it hits the lizard as it falls it still has momentum and is sliding towards him.



I first started looking at stances for holding a machine gun the non traditional way. I looked at the film predator and how Arnold Schwarzenegger held his gun in that

 after this I went and looked at videos on how the body moves when holding a machine gun like this.

from this video you can see 5 people holding and shooting a gun in the position I want. analysing it shows that I need my characters legs to be more parted as that helps when shooting the gun. the arms also vibrate a little and the body moves side to side.

this was the first animation I made. from this I can see I have to tweak the right arm and the movement of the shoulders a little. I also want to add him manically laughing so i'm going to make his body tilt back a little with the head moving.

some more tweaking around with the arms, such as the right arm and moving the spine back a little got me the look I was going for. I also moved the head a little side to side to mimic laughing. the next part was to animate the lizards dying.


I first went and looked at how animals play dead to see were the weight shift when falling over.

from this videos I can see that the animals seem to go onto there side when falling. with the lizard legs i can see that they don't bend much when on the floor or there back. I then tried to show this is my lizard model. what i first did was import my running lizard animation into the scene. I have deleted two so there is just three of them running towards nandos

this scene just quickly shows what he is shooting at. the next part is to animate two of the lizard dying

from animating the death i tried to show the Wight of his body going toward the right and his legs slipping to the other side. the next part was to put it onto my scene. I Added a bit of jaw movement as well.

then the next part was to animate the second lizard dying

with the second death I didn't want it to be the same as the other lizard so I made this one tilt around more and lean to the other side. the third death would be the one that lands at nandos feet

the third death I had to make the lizard lean forward so it has some drag on it as if it was going fast and couldn't stop. I then rendered it to look through nanados legs to show how close it got.

I then added a little scene in-between which shows the camera following a bullet that leads to the lizards head i did this buy creating a bullet model and animating the camera floowing it





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZj_Io9jr70 this link was to a machine gun sound, I would have it at the start were nanados is shooting. I would then having him shout die! at the lizards in a crazed way. after I recorded this I got a house mate to make scream like lizard sounds to try and show the death. for the matrix scene I went and found the trinity kick from the film, I used the sound from this as i count produce it myself to show the bullet going in slow motion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwIoFXo4664


I then started working on facial movements. i wanted to do a close-up of nanados  face while he is shouting die! I frist recorded myself saying it

with a model with a face rig i then tried to mimic my movement

after this was done i put it ttogether with my toms work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QRNUzicU_o&feature=youtu.be