Making My Own Animation

I decided to make my animation within Maya as approved by my lecture that I could use this software package to perform my animation. I chose to use Maya, as Maya is more accessible to me than 3ds Max is, as I'm a Mac user, and 3ds Max does not have a Mac version.

Everything I have learned in 3ds Max can also be applied in the same way in Maya, the difference being the names and location of certain tools e.g. The curve editor is called graph editor in Maya, so I can still apply everything I have learned in 3ds Max to my animation within Maya.

Render Times can be cut short by using Maya play blast feature, which is an easy and fast way of doing quick renders of scenes.

Making the scene

Here you can see I've set up my scene for my animation, I have simple blocks and applied simple textures to complete my scene. Making the scene is important to me and the viewers as it sets the story and environment allowing my viewers to understand and connect with the scene.

 (Example of street scene size and blocks)

The street scene is big and long. The big grey blocks represent buildings they are just simple props.

 

(Example of street scene from above)

You can see in the picture above that there are pavements and a road built into the scene, with very basic textures allowing the viewers to know this is a simple street.

Other sets had to be made and ready to go when the time came to animating a scene. This set is where Sonic is making a fake phone call to Dr. Eggman.

This set up is Dr. Eggman's base, a simple table, chair, keyboard and monitor screen is just needed for this scene.

The Models

The Models are pre-rigged and ready to go when imported into Maya. The models are from the game Sonic Generations, and have controls over pretty much everything from arms, legs, hands and fingers, to the hair, mouth of a character. Having had many lessons now with rigged models I feel confident in working with these models. The downside to these models unlike the models I've worked with in class such as bob, there are no control boxes, or weights. The models parts have to be moved by clicking the joints, this in itself is a tricky task at times, especially when trying to select difficult types of joints such as fingers and leg joints. Having no weights on the foot make a walking movement difficult, especially bending the knee joints or moving the leg etc. The feet unlike the model bob doesn't stick to the floor allowing easy animation for leg and feet movement, it means I have to take great consideration when moving the legs and feet, as the whole body moves along with the feet and leg joints, coursing a great deal of problems.

Here is an example of Amy Rose's joints, you can see that there are joints for pretty much everything even on her hair and dress, this is a great model for allowing me to try out some of the 12 rules of animation such as straight ahead action and pose to pose, follow through and overlapping actions, secondary actions, and exaggeration.

Here you can see the joints for Metal Sonic, he doesn't have any mouth or hair joints as he is a robot, working with Metal Sonic is the easiest model because of the lack of joints.

Starting the animation

I have over 34 scenes to get through for my animation, and is done by FK, so there is a lot of work and time needed through out this project. My goal is to try and create some great animation scenes using the 12 rules to help guide me to create the correct feel and emotions I want to deliver within my animation. My overall feel I want to deliver in my animation is a silly, cheesy, upbeat animation.

(Example of First Scene)

Happy times walk

The first scene I worked on was possibly one of the hardest scenes. I wanted to create a very happy cheerful walk that represents the emotion and personality of Amy as she is a very happy and cheerful character. I had to consider how she would walk and how I could display her girlish and happy like personality, so I thought about her hand placement and movement within her walk. I placed Amy's hands outwards and raised them up to display a feminine feel to the character, this with her big movement from her arms as she walked displayed a happy and feminine character.

Working on her hair/spikes and head movement was something I considered next. Her hair/spikes move as she walks and turns her head, using a follow through and overlapping action with her hair, this was also done with her dress, the dress moves and bends side to side as she walks. All of these facts create a realistic and happy character along side her smile that I placed on her face.

Once I worked out how to get her personality across by her hands, facial expression and large movements, I needed to think about her walk, this is where the difficult part came into play. As pointed out before there is no weights on her feet, meaning is was very hard to get the correct walking emotion/animation across without glitches. I worked for hours on her walk to get it right, but ran into many problems with her feet and legs hovering around the place, or bending in weird directions. 

The result I finally got from my end animation of her walk, pleased me, there are a phew problems with her walk, but she is only on screen walking for a phew seconds, but within those phew seconds you can see her happy cheerful personality coming across within the scene.

(Example of Scene 2)

Seeing Sonic

Within this scene I wanted to show the viewers Amy's happiness in seeing what she thinks is Sonic The Hedgehog. I showed this by her ears, mouth and middle eyebrow, as I moved them up to display a happy emotion. Displaying this happy emotion allows the viewers to know she is excited/happy by what she see's.

(Example of scene 3)

Zoom on the stranger

This scene is a zoom in on Metal Sonic (Or sonic to Amy at this time). I kept Metal Sonic's back to the viewers so even they don't really know who it is until the screen zooms into Metal Sonic's back, revealing to the viewers that this is not in fact Sonic but a fake/robot.

To achieve this zoom effect I got from this scene, I just simply moved everything on the screen to the left, so when I place the view camera on the road, the whole scene comes towards the view camera, making the appearance of a camera zoom.

 (Example of scene 4)

Comedy run

Much like my first scene I had a number of problems with the feet and legs. I wanted a cartoon/comedic running animation where the body is leaned forward and the legs kicking out the back, an idea I got from Richard Williams. This animation helps shows a high speed funny animation, which is what is needed as Amy is running at full speed to what she thinks is Sonic the Hedgehog.

I took into considerations of all the facts from the first scene, with the hair, dress, arms and hands, as these are all important factors to take into place when the body is moving or running like Amy is. I moved Amy's hair back to show the wind pulling her her/spikes back, I put her arms out straight to show the speed that she is going at, and for her ears, I made them go up and down on impact to show secondary actions. 

I'm somewhat pleased with the result I got from this animation, but I sometimes feel it could of been done better.

 (Scene 5)

Big hug for her hero

 (Scene 6)

Amy realising this isn't Sonic

(Scene 7)

Dramatic drop 

Scene 5, 6 ,7 were all scenes where Amy becomes aware that the Sonic she thought she saw, was in fact a fake. Within these scenes I wanted to display the happiness Amy felt when hugging/grabbing Metal Sonic, to the shock of finding out it's not actually Sonic. To display these emotions I considered over empathising the emotions and actions from Amy.  These over empathising scenes are shown by the big hug that literally takes Metal Sonic off his feet, this helps display the fondness and connection she has with this person, to the emotional shock as Amy suddenly dramatically dropping Metal Sonic so hard on the floor, the chaos emerald he is holding fly's out of his hands. I would like to make the viewers feel sad for Amy as she notices that it isn't the person she thought it was.

(Scene 8)
(example of graph editor being used to improve the bounce of the emerald)

The chaos emerald bounces along the floor, this was done with the help of the graph editor, which helps to improve the speed of the hit to the floor. I considered squash and stretch for this scene, but seeing as it's a solid object the squash and stretch would make the emerald appear like jelly. The same scene/animation is reused in scene 20 but flipped, so it appears that the emerald is coming from a different direction.

 (Scene 9)
Grabbing the emerald with Metal Sonic's hand
(His body had to be hidden within the scene)

 (Scene 10)
Big Mistake and evil turn

(Scene 11)
Amy's hit

Metal Sonic plays a big role within these scenes. I really wanted to simply show a motionless and robotic character, already this is somewhat achieved with the design of Metal Sonic, you can tell he's a robot and an evil one at that. Scene 9 was a great scene to show of that robot feel and animation, with Metal Sonic's hand grabbing the chaos emerald. The somewhat clunky feel and movement in his hands really helps the viewers to see that this is a robotic character.
Scene 10 was a scene where I wanted to display fear, and possibly anger from Metal Sonic. I tried to deliver this through Amy's emotions as she places her hand over her mouth to display and reflect her shock and mistake. The movement and animation from Metal Sonic should strike some fear into the viewers, as he looks up from the floor into the camera.
Scene 11 was a simple animation to do as I just rotated Metal Sonic's body with his arm out. This shows the speed and action that Metal Sonic can do to the viewers, he's not a machine to be messed with. The viewers can see from Amy's reaction that she took a hard hit and is hit backwards to the floor. I tried my best to display pain from Amy when she is hit, I showed this by her body language and head movement when Metal Sonic hits Amy, this took a lot timing to get the hit and fall just right to be able to display this emotion to the viewers.

(Scene 12 and 14)
Importing sound into Maya

Sound was important within the scenes where Dr. Eggman is speaking, it's important to link up the speech to the movement of the characters on screen or else there is mixed messages of emotions being displayed on the screen from what the viewers are hearing to what they are seeing. Knowing this I tried my best to display emotions through Metal Sonic as he reacts to the commands given to him by audio. Maya can import audio in the timeline, allowing me to move and react my animation to certain sounds accurately. When rendering out a scene the audio is rendered out with the scene as well, making life that little easier in the editing stage.

(Scene 13)

Amy angry 

For this scene I wanted to get across Amy's anger. Just like the games, your never really sure where she pulls out the hammer, so displaying that same mystery within my animation will make any sonic fan, see the funny side to the hammer appearing out of nowhere. 

I showed Amy's anger in this scene by moving her back forward and her head back, this gives the impression of a pant, this along side secondary actions such as her hair, ears, and gritted teeth, all helps give the impression that Amy is now ticked off.

 (Scene 15)

Dropping in egg bot one

(Scene 16)

Egg bot dropping in two

 

 (Scene 17)

Egg bot landing on his head

The Egg bots were really something I wanted within my animation, I felt by adding in these bots I could really make the animation funny. These robots are dumb and aren't very well made and programmed. I tried to display their personality through the actions they did when they landed within the scene after using a squash and stretch technique to display their weight and force on impact. The actions such as robot one in scene 15 with the rubbish karate chop, and robot two in scene 16 with the head spin, all help to show their personality, robot three scene 17 is so dumb he lands on his head destroying himself.

 (Scene 18)

Egg bots shut down

 (Scene 19)

Dropping the emerald on shut down (Robot on the left side of the screen was moved)

 (Scene 21)

Chaos emerald hitting Amy's boot

(Scene 22)

Happy Amy

Within in these scenes it becomes clear that something has gone wrong with the robots and Amy gets the chaos emerald, making her feel pretty good about herself. I displayed that cheerful Amy by having her hammer upright and not in a threatening and intimidating pose like in scene 13. Having her hand on her hip and the smile on her face helps to suggest she is in a happy and relaxed mood.

(Scene 23) 

Angry Eggman

(Scene 24)

Phone ringing

(Scene 25 and 27)
Answering the phone and talking on the phone

 Scene 26 and scene 28, 30 (30 is at a different angle)
Prank call

 (Scene 29)
Happy reaction after everything will be sorted

(Scene 31)

On hold

 (Scene 32)

Taking matters into hands and turning back on the robots

(Scene 33 and 34)
Terminator stair

Dr. Eggman's scenes with sonic giving him a prank call were all designed to be very funny and somewhat slapstick. These scenes heavily relies on audio to deliver the emotions of the characters, this noted, it also relies on the animation to display the character emotions within the audio as well. Dr. Eggman's large and stupid emotions deliver that comedy feel I was after. I made good use of Dr. Eggmans arm's to display his exaggerated emotions, included his head which I moved up and down when he spoke within the scenes. The large movements and weird head animations when Dr. Eggman talks really helps to bring that comedy side out I was after. With the help of the scenes where Sonic has his hands placed over his mouth, demonstrating to the viewers he is putting a voice on over the phone and Tails laughing in the background, can all help piece together the comedy side to the story and scenes being played out.

To end the whole animation Dr. Eggman scene 33 and 34 turns Metal Sonic back online, I was going for an evil terminator stair for spook the viewers that Metal Sonic is now ready for action.

Odd problems
A weird glitch in scene 31 on Dr. Eggman's arm appears, this is something I had no control over, no matter which way I pointed the camera the glitch showed.

Putting all the scenes together

 

(Example of editing the scenes)

Putting the pieces together

Putting all the scenes together in Imovie really gave me a buzz to see my whole animation coming together. Within Imovie I could also tweak and cut any scenes or parts that may have not gone according to plan, sometimes the speed of a scene needed to be slowed down a little or the animation ran it's course within a scene and needed to be cut short to make a better animation flow. Once I was happy with how my animation went and played out, I exported my complete animation. 

(The link below is to final animation)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0P6WJddBA0

The audio

Example of audio tracks

I recorded all voice recordings and edited them within Logic Studios, I used a pitch shifter on my voice to make me sound deeper to perform Dr. Eggman's voice, along with other effects and filters to make my voice sound as if I'm on the phone or on a walkie talkie.