Bowling Ball Bounce

A sneaky animation...

I have been thinking about developing a good characterised walk to accompany my standard walk cycle. I feel that the latter is at a good level and therefore have a little time to create a more entertaining walk. I wanted to try a sneak based on Richard Williams principles and I really like how this has come out. Though I stuck mostly to the aforementioned's guidelines, I found that a little head turn gave a greater sense of worry.

Tennis Ball Bounce

Some ace development...

The development of my tennis ball bounce.



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Step 4.

Shuttlecock Bounce

A fancy looking walk...

Working in the tram lines...

Development of my shuttlecock bounce (?) as so far.



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Striking developments...

Here are some videos showing the progression of my bowling ball animation so far.


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Step 4.

Lifting it further...

Here I have continued with the "cartoony" acting piece and given it more of an ending.

Starting to pick things up...

Here is my first effort at the lifting sequence. I think this has a good sense of character to it, and though perhpas does not stick rigidly to my reference footage I do believe it makes quite a nice characterised piece. However, now after having been shown Softimage's rotoscope tool I will perhaps attempt a more realistic animation.

Breaking Down the Reference Footage

Here is the reference footage that the above was taken from. Though no Oscar contender I believe my acting is suitable to develop into animation using the Moom character. In this piece I intend to drag out the lift a little more to create a greater sense of how heavy the object is, as well as perhaps begining with a little stretch and eyeing-up of the object to enhance the character.

Walking Funny

After developing a standard, realistic, yet slightly boring walk, I began to think about adding more character. I really enjoyed this and find Softimage a great piece of kit.

Bringing in the Arms

With the lower half working nicely, it was time to work on the arms. It seems that posing the arms at three points (each contact, and the passing postion) is enough to give a natural looking swing. Though the Richard Williams 2-d walk cycle guide obivously has arm poses for each stage of the cycle, Softimage inbetweens well for a simple arm swing.



Im pleased with this walk, it looks relatively natural and realistic despite the obvious cartoon nature of our character, and it was simpler to achieve than I expected. So I went on to have a little fun with characterised walks, which I shall post in due course.

Developing Steps

After showing my intial blocking of the lower half of the walk cycle, it was suggested that, to make my walk more realistic and less exaggerated, I take away some of the bounce. The Richard Williams guidlines we have been following portray a big drop from the waist on the 'down' and a high rise on the 'up,' bellow I have adjusted my to be a little more subtle.

Shuttlecock Bounce

As Googling 'Shuttlecock bounce' is pretty useless, and as I have some at home, I decided to quickly film a shuttlecock bouncing to aid my animation. I did this more than once as unlike a round ball the shuttlecock's bounce is rather unpredictable.




Based on this footage I developed a reference sheet, as with the other bonces:

Walking Further

Duting our lessons we are going to develop and polish a standard walk cycle, but, after blocking out the feet I decided to have some fun with Softimage and animate more. I started with trying to vary the walk a little, make it less standard and more characterful. After a couple of these, which are by no means perfect, but certainly a step in the right direction, I had fun creating a little YMCA jig.

Learning to walk

As we dive further into the world of Softimage, the topic of walk cycles is raised. Im suprised by how quickly I picked this up using the 3d software and the given rig, and found the process of simply blocking out the walk both enjoyable and straightforward. In comparison to working in 2d, where I found hand drawing the walk quite tricky, working in Softimage felt comforable. The rig is great to get hands on with, and I look forward to working on more character animation. The clip below is of my initail work on the bottom half of a walk cycle. Obviously I have a lot to polish up here, like incorporating the toes and foot roll, but for starters I'm pleased.

Moom reenacts his favourite films...

Bouncing Balls

Beginning to think about a bouncing balls...

Working out timings from reference material, thinking about squash and stretch, and general ball based brain teasing.

The Ball and the Wall

We were asked to animate a ball desperate to see over a wall and here is the result. We began to learn about the curve editor as an animation tool, though in the end my piece worked well without the use of said tool, perhaps defeating the point of the excercise. Nonetheless I am pleased with the result and its another step forward in the world of Softimage.

*I thought it looked funny from the otherside of the wall so decided to post that here too.

Softage: The Sequel

Again, this may take a while to load. This is my second attempt at animating within Softimage. In this shot I also included a camera which was enjoyabe to play around with having got to grips with the animation of the ball. This was harder than the previous 'Croquet' piece as the ball not only had to move horizontaly but vertically too, and along a curve. This just meant adding extra keyframes and making sure the ball was touching the ground throughout! I tried to have the ball speed up down the slope as to make it a realistic movement.

Softimage: The First Animation

It may take a while to load, but here is my first attempt at Softimage animation. Given preset objects to play with, the target was to animate the croquet club(?) hitting the ball, however as I felt like experimenting and enjoyed playing with the software I took it a little further.

Potato Heads: The inside story...

Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head

Using Softimage and getting to grips with navigating round the workspace I managed to recreate the iconic climax to Gone With the Wind, and, apparently, America's "Greatest Film Quote of All Time." I used Photoshop to spruce up the images a little.

Today at University I played with Mr. Potato Head

After an introduction to Softimage the first thing to get your head around with the software is working in 3d space. No better way to do this of course than to have a play around with a dissembled Mr and Mrs Potato Head.

In all seriousness this was a good task to get used to navigating three dimensions. Initially this was a little tricky, for example, from one angle Mr Potato Head's hat sat nicely atop his spud head yet as I used the newly learned shortcuts to swing the camera around it was actually nowhere near his head, a trick of the eye. But with a little time the putting together of pieces became a little easier and I look forward to positioning the tasty couple in some kind of comic way, and posting the results over the next week.

you have saved our lives: we are eternally grateful.

And so it begins...

A life of Softimage, walk cycles, and getting lost in a glorious 3d environment lies ahead: and I cant wait to dive right in.

thats all folks.