Strike a Pose! - MAYA

This brief we have been given is about understanding how important acting is for animators. We were provided with a selection of emotions, from which we needed to choose five to portray through the pre-rigged character in Maya. This meant I had to produce photo references for my chosen five emotions, however I was struggling to decide to I produced photographs for them. Im quite the actress..

After all of this majestic activity, I settled on:

ANTICIPATION 

BRAVADO

SHAME

FEAR

ENVY

I chose these five emotions, because they show a range of body language and facial expressions, meaning they would be extremely beneficial for me to work with as I would get used to manipulating the character in a number of ways. 

1. Anticipation 

With this pose, I wanted the character to look as though he is waiting, or on edge about something. When I'm full of anticipation or anxiety I struggle to keep still, hence why this character looks as though he is twiddling his fingers, with head turned as if he is looking for something. I also played around with the facial expression, which I wanted to slightly distressed. 

2. Bravado 

I wanted this guy to look confident and sure of himself (sort of as though he wants to announce to the world that he has just entered a room.) I went for quite a broad and out-stretched stance. 

3. Shame 

I decided to go down the more comical route with this pose, as you can see he is trying to protect his/her modesty. Again, one of the aspects that I paid close attention to was the facial expression. I opened up the mouth and altered the eyes and eyebrows to give off the impression this character is letting of some distress and exasperation. 

4. Timid

I took this opportunity to experiment with making the character crouch down and shrink. I wanted him to look fearful and as a result, cowering away from something. I hunched the back  and shoulders forwards quite a lot to show that he is terrified. I liked the idea of the face being covered by the hands, but the eyes popping out over the top to look. 

5. Envy

This guy is not happy, he's jealous of somebody so I wanted this pose to look as if it aimed at a particular person. I applied some rotation to the shoulders hunched the back forwards to show some serious tension. The hands are rolled into a fist which suggests a lot of anger, as well as the slightly twisted facial expression. I also thought the application of a red material would mirror the emotion quite well!

For these poses I have also played around with the use of spotlight or ambient light, to get an idea of how it effects the shadowing and ambiance of the character. 

To sum it all up..

This exercise has really broadened my knowledge of MAYA when it comes to the manipulation of characters and objects. It has also highlighted the importance of rigging because an understanding of the human anatomy is needed to do it effectively! I have a much better understanding of where to apply movement and rotation in order to achieve the desired pose. 

And So It Begins! - Character and Narrative

On this first day back we received our first brief for Character and Narrative, which left me feeling slightly nervous but also ready to go and produce some really good work! For this module, we are to work in pairs and design, model and animate our own individual characters into a 1 minuet short.

In all honesty, I did at first worry about pairing up because I knew there were some people in the group I would have found it easier to work with than others. However after a chat with my tutor I saw the bigger picture of things and put all personal preferences aside, because this module is about working professionally in teams.

In the end, Ollie and I decided to work together which is quite convenient as we live together and shared the same urge to do as well as we possibly can!

Deciding on a Title

After much conversing and sharing of potential ideas, Ollie and I narrowed our choices down to "Adrift"/"Road to Nowhere" and "The Message." We began mind mapping our ideas for each title to help us make a final decision.

The rest of the day consisted of getting used to working with MAYA again, which proved to actually be much more enjoyable than I expected it would be.  To begin with, we did some experimenting with some simple polygon shapes. These shapes are made up of faces, edges and verticies and through these they can be changed. 

After some playing about the the commands and re-familiarising myself with how to move and manipulate objects, we all began playing around with a pre-rigged character. 

With this character, each point of movement had already been rigged, so we were able to experiment and move him into different positions. Each point needed to be selected before it could be moved. With some areas, such as the foot, there were different options as to how it could be manipulated. The heel alone could be lifted, the toes could be lifted or twisted. 

It was really interesting to see all the points of the body which could be altered. Alterations could be applied to effect the scale, to move and to rotate specific areas. The examples above show my first attempt at moving this character around. I have altered the positioning of the feet to make it look as though he is on the move.