As part of module assessment, I was tasked with creating animations for any rig of my choice. I used the Maya 2024 to complete the assignment. The assignment required a rig to be animated with 3 parts viz., Walk Cycle, a choice between an Attack Combo & Facial Performance and a choice between Game Pack (Idle, Walk, Run, Jump) & Character Performance. This assignment project came as an interesting prospect and wide area to apply the principles and methods learnt throughout the course.
The Rig
The Rig I chose was the ‘Black Panther’.
The rationale behind choosing this rig was simple, after looking at the assignment I immediately decided to go for the Attack Combo option; hence, I knew I needed a rig that establishes a clear psyche of power. After skimming through the free Rigs provided by our professor, I stumbled across this Black Panther Rig.
With my reasoning fitting the frame, I couldn’t have picked up a better rig to put the animation ideas into.
This Rig featured simple but all round rig controls which were easy to manipulate. The rig had the controls for head, neck, 5 controls for the spine and 1 for the core and controls for the feet which enabled manipulation of entire legs.
To render the animations, I used Arnold Renderer with a preset of HD 1080, image format as png for exporting frames and setting the camera (AA) samples at 8 (which meant larger rendering time but smooth transitions). Having a RTX 3050 Graphics card really helped me render these animations properly (P.S. It crashed a couple of times :(…). For all the renders I had set up a separate camera which I was also able to animate in a few cases.
A ‘Unique’ Walk Cycle…
The first part of the assignment required us to create a unique Walk Cycle for the character that corresponded to the character’s personality. The grounds at which we were going to be assessed for this part was how creative we get with the walk cycle, how efficiently we associate the walk cycle with the character and how efficiently we utilise the tools to create the animation not less than 6 seconds long in duration.
Starting with the walk cycle animation, I created a story board marking the key poses of the animation following which I used the Black Panther rig as a base to create a unique and interesting walk cycle. I wanted to make the character feel more dynamic and have a personality, I decided to add a ‘Wakanda Forever’ pose where the character crosses their arms while walking.
To make it even more interesting, I added boxing movements to make it seem like the character is training while walking. I decided to top it off by adding in motion blur and a little bit of camera movement where the camera slowly zooms into the rig and moves along with the character as it throws punches.
To make the animation as polished as possible, I followed the principles of animation. I started by blocking out the primary and secondary actions of the walk cycle. I made sure to pay close attention to the timing, spacing, and weight of the animation to make it feel natural and fluid.
The real challenge here was to stretch out the key frames and block the rig at all the right or ‘almost right’ frames to make the animation more than 6 seconds long. To have enough poses to fill all 144 frames combined with the simple walk cycle meant a lot of trial and error. After a lot of deliberation, I decided to space my key frames for walking 3 frames apart and cycle them. Filling the in-between with the unique poses was the next step where I fixed the ‘Wakanda Forever’ pose between the transition from initial pose to first ‘pass pose’ with the rig’s hands returning to their initial position at next pass pose. With enough space to demonstrate the walk cycle, I blocked the boxing pose (rig putting its arms up as if it is blocking a punch) at frame 82.
Following this started another round of trial and error where I had to figure a good position to key my punching pose so that it transitions smoothly and does not feel janky. I found frame 101 the right fit after which it was easy to key the next punching pose (other hand) at frame 120. I was able to finely pick these frames using the Graph Editor where I created linear tangents for these punching animations so the jerk in the body could be demonstrated.
Finally, I used the Graph Editor to refine the animation as much as possible, making sure that every movement looked like it flowed smoothly and had the desired impact.
The Attack Combo…
For this part of the assignment, I created an animation for an attack combo where the character throws an object in the air and slams it on the ground. To make the animation feel more dramatic, I exaggerated the movements and poses of the character. I used the principles of anticipation and follow-through to make the animation feel more dynamic.
Here I wanted to depict a natural movement for the Black Panther while he attacks. An attack combo which is methodic but at the same time a little bit savage and wild. I tried looking for references but was unable to find what I was exactly looking for since this attack combo neither involved punching nor any weapon. Hence, I proceeded onto making the storyboard purely based on how I pictured it in my mind.
The assessment criteria here was that the attack should have at least two hits and should be carried out against a dummy / punching bag.
Keeping this in mind, I devised an attack combo in which Black Panther would hit a clawed uppercut shooting the object in the air completing the first strike. With a vertical jump following the previous hit, Black Panther would then hit the object mid air with both hands to slam it onto the ground thus completing the second strike.
To make the animation a bit more intense, I decided to add some camera movements and motion blur to make sure the viewer can feel the impact
The trick here was to play a lot with the graph editor until I had those crisp movements which contributed towards the impact of the 2 hits.
A messy image of the curves for various controls
The final animation is almost 2.5 seconds long with 66 frames in total and this was the most fun animation to indulge myself into which I might say turned out quite good.
The Game Pack…
This part of the assignment consisted of 4 sub parts where we were required to create a set of game ready animations for the rig with basic movements. We were asked to animate the rig with Idle, Walk, Run and Jump/ Dodge/ Dive/ Sprint animation.
Keeping the Character Alive… Idle Animation
The gist behind a good idle animation as per my understanding is keeping the character alive or making it look alive even when it’s not making any movements. The core elements that contribute towards this, for my character, were the breathing motion and subtle transition of repeated motion that were put on the cycle.
Since the rig I chose did not have any control for the eye movement, I decided to move its head along with the body. I wanted its body to flow as smoothly as possible hence came the part where I had to spend a lot of time in the graph editor to tweak the curves.
The idea behind this idle motion was inspired by the vigilant nature of Black Panther where if this character was to put in a game, he would keep a vigil even when he was doing nothing.
The rig was set up with keyframes starting at frame 1 where he stood hands wide open with his chest in exhale position transitioning slowly into inhaling as his posture straightens drawing hands closer neck and head rotating centre to right (for rig) to copying the keys from frame 1 to key 38 where he returns to his exhaled position.
The Walk…
I followed the reference from the book ‘The Survival Kit of Animator’ closely for this particular part.
I followed the same principles I used during my previous Walk Cycle and spaced the keyframes at every 3rd frame and tried paying particular attention towards the weight and balance of the character during the movements. To achieve this I tweaked the spine and cog controls, putting pressure and tilting the body at right places in the right direction to give a natural walking effect.
Tilting the cog onto the right (left) side as the right (left) leg gets planted on the ground.
The next step to make the walk look more natural was to add the oscillating hand motions to the rig.
Hand movements
The easiest way to achieve the blocking here was setting the hands at initial position at frame 1 and bringing them back to this initial position every pass pose and then oscillating them in opposite direction of the legs during every in-betweens.
Hand Oscillations
The final thing to do was to tweak the curves in the Graph Editor to make the transitions as smooth as possible.
The Run…
The way I see it, the Running animation is very closely associated with how you implement the walk animation since the motions used are just extended versions of the walk cycle. Keeping this in mind I started with a rough plot for the walk cycle then began extending and creating more space while blocking.
I used another reference from the ‘The Animator’s Survival Kit’ as shown below:
Following the same principles of weight and balance I began tracing the key poses doing trial and error with the spacing.
I blocked the rig at frames 0,3,6,9,12,15,19,21 & 24, cycled it to infinity and started tweaking the curves in the graph editor to remove any janky movements that may arise.
The Jump…
As fitting to the Black Panther’s personality, I wanted to demonstrate his athleticism and agility in a single fluid motion for which I decided to create a long vertical jump animation. To achieve this I started deliberating with the key poses and timing of the animation.
Trying to apply the concepts that I have learnt, starting at the initial pose of standing moving onto creating an anticipation pose with the rig compressing, squatting down with hands back followed by explosive motion where the rig decompresses, shoots upward using the hands and legs to propel itself in the air demonstrating the inertia. The rig then lands down into another deep squatting pose before returning to the standing pose.
Conclusion
As it is said, the beginning is always tough, I faced a lot of challenges right off the gate. With many tools and plugins for Maya at my disposal such as Animbot, Studio Library, twinMachine etc. I was unable to get them to work and got a ton of script errors trying to install Animbot. Given the constraint on the time, I decided to do it the hard way and went ahead without these tools. Despite the roadblocks, fortunately, I was able to complete the assignments and was also able to become more diligent towards observing things and their working. I also gained valuable experience of animation.
Reflection
From an honest point of view, I feel like I missed a ton of things and apparently neglected many basic carry outs which unfortunately I realised only after I rendered my animations and exported them out of Adobe Premiere. There is room for improvement in a lot of ways. I have always believed myself to be a very observant person towards small details, however, the animation process requires one to be more meticulous picking up the minute details, from the contact points on the plane to tweaking the curves bit by bit until it transitions smoothly throughout and one acquires the exact desired outcome.
Despite this critical outlook, I believe I did a good job for someone who picked up animation for the first time. The next step in this process is definitely more practice and consistency. The lectures and recorded sessions were a massive help, the workshops were a great target practice, the assignment was the perfect testing ground.
As a Game Design student, choosing character animation was a very valuable addition to my skill set. It was a fun learning process that made me look at the animations around me from a different perspective. I read somewhere, it took 800 people and 4 years to create the movie ‘Spiderman – Into the Spiderverse’ I was flabbergasted and did recognise the effort; however, after completing this course, now I not just recognise the effort but also appreciate it as well as understand how and why it took so much of what it did.
All in all it broadened my horizons of not just skills but of understanding of mechanics of things around us that we don’t usually pay attention towards. I am still a long way from calling myself an animator, but one thing for sure, I enjoyed the process more than anything and would love to do it more. Fingers crossed for the Results….