After rigging both my characters and making a small storyboard for my loop, it was time to start animating. I wanted to start with the big sister walking forwards, ready to grab the ice cream from her little sisters hand, so the audience can kind foreshadow the mischief, but this was harder than I anticipated.
I followed the five step walk cycle like I have always done, in 2D and 3D Maya animation, but it was slightly more trickier this time because I wasn't drawing the position each time, and my characters aren't 3D models, therefore After Effects was bending and stretching the body parts so I had to try and do it without it looking too abnormal and out of place. It took me several tries to do this, especially because all the separate layers were linked together, so there was constant follow through that the software did itself, but it wasn't cohesive so I had to reanimate it after each pose.
As you can see in the first test, the big sister's walk is very uneven and irregular. It does not look natural, like how any normal person would walk, but I guess this is just a test so it is okay for me to do this. At this point I was very off put finishing the loop because it was taking me so long to key each body part, only to find the results were not successful. However I kept at it, and with each test I did, I could see slight improvements, it just took me a lot longer than I had anticipated.
This time I added in the little sister so I could see when the older sister should stop walking, along with when she should start to grab the ice cream. For the first part of the walk cycle, the hands and feet do match well, I just lost it a bit at the end and again, it started to look unnatural. I also forgot to animate the gloves, so up close they are still in the primary position, and make her hands look like they are constantly being bent backwards.
I then started to see some better results. I moved some keyframes so that the spaces in between the steps were much more quicker, natural and smoother. And I also rotated her hands. Simple changes make such a difference with this type of animation, so even though it felt tedious at times, I feel like it was necessary for me to have better follow through. I did encounter a slight problem with the little sister however. I really wanted her to walk towards the older sister as she grabs the ice cream away from her, however even though I rigged her body and her legs moved great, I must have connected/parented the legs to the hips incorrectly, as when I went to key her legs, they moved but the spine warped awfully. I then went to unparent and reconnect to the leg controllers to different joints, but this only resulted into me breaking the controllers, which meant they were unusable and I could not animate with them. I found this out after much research as I didn't even know it was possible to break controllers as I had never experienced this in Maya either. This has taught me to think about what I am connecting more, and not assume that two softwares are the same. This meant that I could not move the little sisters legs even though I rigged them, so I had to make do with moving other parts of her body instead.
But this is the main animation for my loop that I ending up coming up with. I am proud of it in the sense that I tried something new and learnt A LOT. I really enjoyed the technical aspects of Maya, and I did enjoy them here, in After Effects as well, however I found it much difficult to problem solve here, for example when I broke the controller, it was unfixable and this was very frustrating for me as I usually find solutions to most of my problems. But I think it resembles the theme of sisters quite well and it is my first attempt at loopdeloop so I shouldn't have set such high standards for myself.
Then it was time to add in a background that I could loop, and I started with this one. I made this in Photoshop using colours that I liked, adhering to the graphic design-esque look that my two characters had themselves. However I thought that it distracted from the animation, and it looked too big and loud for the few seconds of the loop so I went back to the drawing board.
I then decided to make a little town so that I could loop it continuously without having to worry about what place it would stop at. By doing this I could have the two characters walk along with the town, and the audience can still see what they are up to, whilst flicking through the rest of the loops on the home page.
And this is my final loop! This was the hardest brief out of the ones that I chose I think, because making an animation loop but still have allow it to have content, is hard in itself! There is so much to consider, and for my first loop I think it is okay. There is a lot I would change for example the speed of the panning, however if I had more time to submit it, I would definitely try and fix this. But I am glad I can say that I attempted to rig characters in After Effects! I would like to try this again because practice makes perfect, and I have seen some great results form it, so I know it has potential, so I am not completely ruling it out. I think experimenting is a good thing, so I know what I would change in the future and what I will keep the same.
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