Animation Body Mechanics: The Breakdown.
- Savannah Edwards
- Dec 20, 2018
- 9 min read
The Animation Body Mechanics project was presented as an opportunity to practice our knowledge and skills in animation and improve upon them with each exercise prompted by the project. It was encouraged to explore, learn and practice various software and mediums.
For me, this project was a huge learning curve, though it was not so much learning of applying animation theory, it was more learning new tools and techniques in a software that I had barely touched before. Each exercise was a time to learn new tools, and a chance to familiarise myself with After Effects and a number of plugins such as Duik Bassel, Joysticks 'n Sliders, Rubber Hose 2, and more. Following this I will explain and break down the workflow for each of the exercises.
Exercises and their Workflows
Exercise 1. Ball Bounce and Simple Action
Tools: After Effects
Though I've done it many times, the bouncing ball exercise I believe is something essential to help ease yourself into a new software. It was helpful getting a handle on the interface and finding where all the tools were. Being a simple exercise it was a short and easy workflow:
Asset creation - Using 2 shape layers in After Effects, I created a ball and a shadow shape.
Animation - Here I animated the ball and shadow, including squash and stretch and some scaling to the shadow as it got closer to the floor.
Tools: After Effects
My first big big spoonful of animation in After Effects. This was a rather painful but necessary exercise to do. The character and rig that I use here were provided for learning by Greg Gunn. I found the rig a bit frustrating to use as it still hadn't occurred to me that I could change the parameters (which I did for later exercises).
Finding reference - I've always been adamant in finding/making reference material for me as it's vital in understanding and learning how the body moves and looks (above, right).
Pulling the reference footage apart - Here I just slowed the reference footage as much as I could and screenshot the most important parts of the action.
Importing the rig - Pretty self explanatory, I imported the rig into a new project and placed it on a new composition to have it ready for animating.
Animating - Pose to pose was used here as it is most appropriate for character animation.
Exercise 2. Lifting an Object
Tools: After Effects, Adobe Illustrator, Joysticks 'n Sliders, Duik Bassel, Rubber Hose 2
I ended up doing much more than I had anticipated for this exercise. This whole exercise was a bit of run off from my mini specialisation whereby I went through the whole pipeline.
Design - I sketched various designs on paper and with Photoshop and iterated upon it a few times so that I could make an appealing character.
Making Assets - I created the assets for the character in Illustrator
Rigging - Pickles was rigged in After Effects via parenting and a few After Effects plugins that I had been learning in my own time for mini specialisation: Joysticks 'n Sliders, Duik Bassel and Rubber Hose 2. Rigging took a lot of time to get to a somewhat satisfactory level, as it was my first time making a 2D rig. I went back and forth between After Effects and Illustrator when I was testing my rig to change and edit bits of the assets so things wouldn't be protruding when animated. I still have a ways to go to for improving on making 2D character rigs, and I'm keen to get it right.
Animation - I went pose to pose as is appropriate. I had a bit of a tough time working with this rig as I hadn't done a few things correctly. (I wanted to use it later on for the short action sequence but decided it would be too arduous to animate considering my time frame).
Exercise 3. Working with Video Reference
Tools: After Effects
I wanted to make a simple and funny animation that looped for this exercise and remembered a music video from Little Big that I had been shown for it's iconic silly dance featured throughout the whole video (right). I used the first few seconds of the video as reference when we first see the lead singer. I wanted to have a floor under the rig moving like a treadmill to make it more obvious that Lucy was actually walking down but it proved to be more of a challenge and I decided to leave it out and focus on my next exercise.
Finding reference - As explained above I wanted to find something simple that could loop
Pulling the reference footage apart - I slowed the footage as much as I could and screenshot the contact poses as well as the main movements.
Importing the rig & reference - I imported the Lucy rig into a new project and put it in a new composition. I also imported my screenshots into After Effects to animate next to. This proved to be a much easier approach over switching tabs to look at my references.
Modifying the rig - As the action was front on I had to modify the rig and it's parameters to make it ideal to use for this exercise. I had to flip the bending direction for a few limbs and such.
Animating - As normal I used a pose to pose approach to animating the character.
Exercise 4. Short Action Sequence
Tools: After Effects, Adobe Illustrator
It was unforeseen to see how much faster I worked in this exercise compared to previous exercises. I was rather pleased with how this turned out despite wanting to have used my Pickles zombie rig (hence the boxes of brains). I knew we had to express some more personality in the character for this sequence and decided on a skippy happy-go-lucky kind of personality - hence the skipping and energetic climbing followed by the little jump of triumph at the top of the brain box stacks.
Planning - Before anything I did some brainstorming for this as it was a longer more creative sequence. I did a bit of very primitive and sketchy story boarding to figure out what I wanted.
Research - I hadn't made a skipping cycle for a character so I watched a few videos of people skipping and a really awesome and helpful tutorial and breakdown of how a skip works by Felix Sputnik.
Importing the rig and assets - I imported the Lucy rig and box asset into a new project and put it in a new composition. I then stacked the boxes up to make a little obstacle for Lucy.
Animating - As normal I used a pose to pose approach to animating the character.
Research, Resources, References & Tutorials
Majority of my research and tutorials are shared with my mini specialisation project as I was learning After Effects for both projects.
aescripts + aeplugins. (2016). Joystick 'n Sliders Tutorial [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OoEypt1YXU
The first tutorial I had a look at regarding Joysticks 'n Sliders, it was really helpful giving the low down on the basic functions of the tool.
Colombo, E. (2017). After Effects character animation workflow [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--oTQCysVTs
A really great look at the character pipeline in After Effects from the design to the polished animation. I learned a number of new tools and techniques observing this video.
Dufresne, N. (2018). About - Duduf After Effects Framework. Retrieved from https://rainbox-dev.github.io/DuAEF_Duik/
The Duik Bassel wiki that contained all the information I needed about the script. It was really helpful when I was stuck on how to do something, especially using constraints with Duik Bassel (which is actually a really awesome and straight forward feature).
Easy After Effects. (2018). Apple animation tutorial - Bouncing balls / Intention part 8 [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DTL0WXr80M
I followed this tutorial when I was first starting the exercises and it was very very helpful and easy to follow. I also discovered a number of other easy and good practice tutorials from this channel that I'll probably give a whack over the holidays.
Fiz. (2017). Skip Animation Tutorial (Felix Sputnik) [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3AlUyOjNb8
This was a fantastic tutorial and explanation about animating a skip cycle, Felix talks about the way in which the body works and the curves of the spine, even providing a side by side shot of his animation and a super easy to read timeline for each part of the body, showing the curves. I utilised this for the short action sequence exercise.
Gigantic. (2017). Character Rigging, EASY Character Animation Tutorial In After Effects, Illustrator And Duik Plugin [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJgAUkjsomA
The first video I watched about rigging the body with AFter Effects and it was a great help when I was first grasping the different scripts and such.
Gilleard, J. (2018). JAMES GILLEARD. Retrieved from http://www.jamesgilleard.com/
James Gilliard was an awesome reference to look at for his Illustrator work. For one project he and Steve Kirby worked on an animated music video and the way his illustrations stood out with the animation really got me to start using After Effects.
Gunn, G. (2018). Lucy - A Free Adobe After Effects Rig. Retrieved from https://www.ggunn.com/resources/free-after-effects-rig-lucy/
I didn't find many pre-rigged characters online to my liking, mainly due to the rigid design of them. When I found this Lucy rig from Greg Gunn I was overjoyed to have found such a cute and awesomely designed character to use for my exercises. I also scrolled through his work and he's really got some beautifully made stuff, one of my favourites being his work on Nat Geo Wild.
Kirby, S. Steve Kirby. Retrieved from https://stevekirby.co.uk/
I really wanted to animate in After Effects after stumbling across Steve Kirby's page, full of some awesome work I got really excited about the technique he was using as it produced some very unique work. That's also how I began using Joysticks 'n Sliders.
Koelsch, C. (2017). TnT Tuts - #4 - Bouncing Balls [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvZR0Pc3e9o&list=PLHz_Qug46gdXsT7QBGRGTwyBSk7Z5s7QW&index=8
Another tutorial I had a look at for the first exercise and it's very very comprehensive. He covers how various kinds/weights of balls would look animated and so forth. It was great for easing me into After Effects.
Plaskow, R. (2017). Rigging With Rubberhose | How To Animate [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=506_DILyTnE
Probably one of my more favourite tutorials when I was rigging Pickles. It was a fantastic and super helpful tutorial. I skipped to the second half as the first part is creating the character (I already had made Pickles in Illustrator at this point).
School of Motion. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.schoolofmotion.com/
Though a lot of the tutorials and info on School of Motion is paid for, some of the free tutorials were really great resources to read through and watch, especially for motion graphics and the like. I'll probably have another look at some stuff on here in future for browsing.
Tutorials | EasyAfterEffects.net. (2018). Retrieved from http://easyaftereffects.net/category/tutorials/
A really really awesome tutorial mania for After Effects, I discovered it after watching the first bouncing ball tutorial listed earlier. There's a lot of really great tutorials that you can practice and learn with that are super simple and easy to understand.
ukramedia. (2015). 20 Free After Effects Scripts - Part 1 of 2 [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFHtmmuEpHA&list=PL1gEYuY5m72ZaHv8wYyYrm-vtExK4eeFh
ukramedia. (2018). 22 Free After Effects Scripts - Part 2 of 2 [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duZQQ46p8B8&index=2&list=PL1gEYuY5m72ZaHv8wYyYrm-vtExK4eeFh
As I got more interested in all of the extra plugins and scripts for After Effects, these two videos were handy in discovering new tools.
Williams, M. Morgan Williams - Animation Projects. Retrieved from https://clubcocoanut.com/projects
I really loved her rigging work which was featured on the Duik Bassel download page and was adamant about finding out who did it. I found her eventually and turns out she teaches a very intense course about rigging on School of Motion. She's got some awesome awesome work.
Yes I'm a Designer. (2017). Learn to Draw Anything with Adobe Illustrator CC [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbbQl2sU-ag
I was a bit clueless with using Illustrator, this was a really good low down on how to do things and make various tools. I had to use it to create my assets as vectors were a lot safer to use in After Effects.
Post Mortem
Learning a brand new program comes with its challenges, After Effects certainly provided a lot of them.
How do I...? - There were so many instances where I was trying to do something and I just got completely stumped on how to do it. Sometimes I couldn't find a tutorial or couldn't understand them and it was really really frustrating. I think this was because I was really biting off more than I could chew and got stuck on every detail and didn't move on from it. I think in future I need to just chill out and focus on broad strokes first (which I did more toward the end).
What to do... - I have a habit of being very indecisive when starting a project. I stalled deciding on my medium for a while that I ended up falling behind. This is something that I do with a lot of things, it's mainly of a fear of making the wrong choice or regretting a choice later. I think I need to be more confident and just go for things in future.
Out of my depth - This project had me holding up a heavy load of work. I chose to use After Effects for the fact that I couldn't work with 3Ds Max at home as I didn't have the right equipment. Initially I thought this was a good idea but it turned out to be a huge huge learning curve and I had a tough time keeping up, I felt like my brain was melting or short circuiting sometimes. I probably should have shrunk my scope for things a bit so I wouldn't be as stressed. Regardless, I'm really glad I chose After Effects as it's a huge program with plenty to pick at.
Appraisal
Seeing that I had barely touched After Effects before I started this project, I'm very pleased with the progress I have made from the beginning til now, and I plan to keep on progressing. I really learned a lot and am proud to have started learning something new. I really want to focus on making a really nice 2D character rig and iterate on the one I have already made of Pickles.
Cheers,
Grassland
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