Though I was a little panicked about Hayley not having her character rigged fully yet, I was able to get on with starting to animate because the first few scene only include my character to begin with. Hayley and I discussed that she would do the last 30 seconds of the animation and I would do the first so our time is equally balanced. Therefore I got onto doing that as soon as possible.
I started with the zoom/swooping action into our scene. This was a lot harder than I had imagined, but I sort of expected it after my previous test moving the camera, and realising how fast it can move and how nauseous it can make you feel. So I really had to try and find this balance between gentle swooping, yet being able to progress through the scene efficiently. I swooped the camera through the entrance of the scene, and then I gently turned the camera to the right to get the sole focus onto the stand.
I also animated my lights and ferris wheel! I didn't actually think you animate lights, but it turns out you can and they look great when they are moving slowly, as if the characters are about to actually participate in a real life carnival! I combined the seats and the diagonal cylinders together so that they could move independently to the circular bars, and then practiced with the timing as I didn't want the ferris wheel to be completely spinning around, just slowly moving. All of these aspects have helped me to develop my skills with timing. I feel as though now most of the time when I animate it is intuitive, which is such a great thing for me to have overcome!
I also had a go at giving my character a walk cycle. Since Hayley is not rigging her characters legs, I thought i'd have a go at making mine walk! It was actually really complex for me to do, just because my brain kept forgetting the next poses and sometimes she'd walk slower than the other, but in the end I think I got a decent walk cycle, and if anything it allowed me to practice the human movement and think about timing a lot more!
Because I really wanted to have a shot from behind the hoops and into the scene, I switched cameras to the position shown in the video above, and was able to capture her jump a lot more cinematically. I feel like this directs the audience to focus on the little sisters point of interest, as well as marking where the animation will centre around, and establishing the main goal of the narrative. I have noticed that camera angles are extremely important in any type of film, therefore I am going to try and incorporate as many interesting, but obviously relevant ones into my 30 seconds, and if anything it will allow me to see what works and what doesn't!
And that was my first go at animating our first scene! I actually found this rather enjoyable, however I didn't take into account how long it would take my scene to render. I had been rendering my images at HD 520, so when I bumped up the quality to 1080, it took over 3 hours to render those 5 seconds....
I think in the future I am going to have to leave my laptop on over night to render those images or else I will not be able to get any animation done at all! I spent a long time on the scene so I don't want to change anything on it as of yet, however if I use Maya for my next project, I will have to keep things even more simpler, or else I will probably spend over a weeks worth just rendering out my images alone!
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