Final Animation

Due to rendering issues I wasnt able to render the sequence fully however I did make a rough playblast version of it just in case. I added the light onto the lamp in order to set the ambience and added a subtle side light in order to counter the extreme darks.






Over all im really pleased with this animation however I experienced many technical problems and had many frustrating restarts which set me back. I would have liked more time to add sound but apart from that Ive really enjoyed this project.

Rendered Items

With the models I made I decided to add some colour to them. I did this by appliying new material and choosing from the selection. Although its basic I feel its needed in order to enhance the animation. Below are some of the rendered Items.

Animatic

After I had completed all of my models I ported them all into one scene and started to plan out the timing. Rather than create a drawn animatic I decided to use CG as the tool to create one. I positioned all of the objects onto the desk and began tweaking and making changes until I felt it all flowed. I then began crudley animating the sequence to get a sense of the timing. I also positioned the camera so that it captured the whole sequence in one sweeping shot rather than several cuts in order to keep it all fluid. This was the end result.

Desk

The last model I made was my desk which is where my animation will take place.

When modelling I realised that my desk was too thin to accomdate the objects I was going to use to animate so I made the creative choice to lengthen it allowing for more room otherwise the animation would be too tight.

Wall-e Test

I wanted to observe how Wall-e's neck mechanism worked so I made this little test to see.
I hade to manually move each joint in his neck in order to replicate the bending motion in the hinges. I then played around with the key frames to alter the speed at which his neck goes back into position.

wall-e

One of my favourite animated characters is Wall-e and I wanted to incorperate my toy version of him into my animation as hes quite a challenge to model for me.

To begin with I made several basic shapes and begin positioning them together. I then worked more detail into them and using the boleon effect to create the distinct shapes of wall-e's body. Afterwards I worked on his eyes. To do this I recreated the binocular shape and duplicated it twice in smaller sizes and peiced them together. Im really pleased with the result as its taken along time to make him.

Lamp modelling

To further my modelling I wanted to tackle something more challenging so I took some more photos of my desk lamp and had a go at recreating it.

To start with I made the base and built upwards building the hinges and rivets peice by peice. The springs were made by mapping a straight line on the grid, creating a ring around it and transforming it into a spiral shape. I then ported that over to my lamp model and scaled it down to fit.

Afterwards I made a test showing the lamp bending on its hinges. After lots of tweaking I finally got something I think is quite accurate.

Improved Domino test

After making the first domino test I wanted to see how a real chain of dominos would flow in terms of real time. As seen in some of the research videos it seems that the flow of dominos is incredibly fast so I made this little test to capture that sense of speed.

Slide test

This was another quick test to see the timing and how this little set up might work. Its very crude and without any of the little touches applied to the animation.

In reality it would be very difficult to set this up without it falling down all the time however I think it still works effectivly and I might just incorportate this colapsing afterwards.

I made three books in different sizes and also created a mini domino effect set up using pencils, balls and rulers.

I like how its set up using objects from my room and how it seems to be makeshift. This is something I shall continue in exploring my desk theme for this animation.

Lid Test

After making the bin I began thinking about how it would animate so I decided to make a quick test showing the lid flipping.

Continuing my modelling I made my bin and my pencil jar applying the same techniques as before.

For the pencils I creatd long thin cylinders and reduced the amount of sides on it to create that pentagonol shape. I then extruded the end into a point.

The next item was a small drum I had in my room.

Again I created this from a cylinder and used the extrude tool to make the hourglass shape in the middle.

Modelling

After looking at the research videos I decided to choose objects around my room to start modelling with. I took several photographs to use as reference and then went about recreating them in CG.

The first item I tried my hand at was the spray can.

I made this model by creating simple cylinder shapes and applying the boleon effect on the nossle. I then made three different sized ringsand positioned them at the top, bottom and neck of the can.

Domino Test

This was a quick test I made at animating a Domino effect. Its quite straightforward with the general knock on effect being easy to animate and is quite effective.

After feeling more confident with animating these shapes I added a tyre shape into the mix so I could try pushing the animation. This was particularly difficult to get right as i had to capture the wobbling effect after the tyre rolled. I studied how a coin landed after I rolled it to get the right feel.

To push these tests further I wanted to complicate things more by adding a pyramid. I applied the same principle to this shape as I did for the cube in the fact that because of the corners this shape will have random bounces until it lands on a face. I started with the pyramid upside down so I could have the first bounce propell it. Afterwards I applied subtle bounces before it comes to rest on its base.

I wanted to see how I could animate a cylinder by playing around with the key frames. In particular I worked on capturing the subtle bounces that this shape might make when it makes contact with the floor. Im quite pleased with the end result as it the movement looks believable.

This experiment was made to illustrate my theory that a cube can have more bounce if you make it appear to be lighter in weight than the previous test.

This experiment was tweaking the the animation a bit and adding a cube. I did this because I felt it would be interesting to see how a cube would land if it had been dropped as it has no round surface to roll on. I realised that the cube would simply bounce of each corner before landing on one face. Depending on the weight or mass of the cube depends on how much it bounces for example Dice are extremly light and there for at each bounce on each corner the dice is propelled even further where as a heavy cube would absorb the impact and come to a halt more quickly.

In our CG tutorials we were shown the basics of animatin after modelling is complete. I decided to experiment with the program by creating three different sized balls and try to animate them with different weights in mind.

Research VIdeos

These are some of the videos I found for reference and inspriation.





I particularly like the variation in speed with these contraptions which demonstrates each objects difference in weight and mass. This is something I can try to imitate when I animate my own version to help create believable flow of movement.







Although its short I particularly like how the objects used go from small and end up big at the end as if the chain reaction has snow balled!


This is a Domino animation I found for reference.






Mouse Trap Is a great example of a board game applying a chain reaction to its gameplay.

CG Chair

To get to grips with CG modelling we were given the task of making a chair and to think about objects in 3 Dimensional terms.

I began by making two cubes and manipulated the second into a the shape of the seat by using the extrude tool.

I then created longer thinner cubes and duplicated them to make each leg. Afterwards to create the back I tapered the sides and duplicated a long thin cube multiple times to make the slats.

Tada!