Animation Project

Robot Background & Setting

My robot name is Toby, Toby is initially doing his assigned work, he is doing it in a very systematical and consistent way, he imagines it was to be another ordinary day at work and hence was in a very monotonous mood.

The scenario in which Toby would be is scenario 3 where there are boxes that are moving slowly at first but then gradually accelerates.

Self Critique

Overall I felt that I did my animation to the best of my ability, even if I did not use that many principle of animation in my work, I felt that my animation was still generally well done enough to portray the emotions and reaction of my robot clearly enough to the audience watching my animation. Another area that I felt that I have done well in general is the application of timing in my animation. However I am not pleased with myself for not being able to use the graph editor in my animation as I regrettably was not well-versed enough about the graph editor to use it to better my animation.

Animating of the robot arm to carry the boxes

Initially I was discussing with my tutor on how we can make the boxes come in for the robot arm to carry it, he suggested using a camera that shows only certain area of the scene so that we can make it seem as though the boxes are moving in via a conveyor belt.. He suggested that the camera could be positioned at such an angle that it showed the robot arm picking the boxes up but also in such a way that when the conveyor belt moves quickly the boxes that the robot arm failed to picked up would drop downwards and out of the camera view.

Hence taking his advice I tried to plan my animation to do so in such a way, making some modification of my own such as adding another platform where the robot arm would place all the boxes it had collected so far, that platform would move out of the camera view each time a box is placed on it to give the illusion that it was transporting the box it had to someplace else.

As for the animation of the robot arm carrying the box, I simply did it using the same method which the online Maya tutorial demonstrated, which was setting the constraints of the boxes by key framing them at the appropriate time. I initially made an error of not key framing the parent constraints selectively and as a result it screwed up my animation however I rectified that mistake and everything worked perfectly as I had planned so far.

Below shows the animation that I had hoped to achieve at that instance, it was generally easily done and it only took me a day though looking back I should have finished this much sooner, unfortunately I did not paid as much attention to the “selective” key framing of the box and therefore wasted time here.

Parent Constraint (Oh God…)

This was by far the worst time eater I had doing this Animation project, initially I assumed duplicating the boxes and merely setting new key frames for them zooming down the platform/conveyor belt would work unfortunately it didn’t and hence started a series of test and methods to get the parents constraint of boxes to work accordance with the “moving platform” and the robot arm to work.

The next method I tried was doing a special duplicate/ other forms of duplicating it, admittedly I didn’t really understand the special duplicating functions hence I didn’t really expect this method to work, however it did work out in a way, unfortunately it wouldn’t allow me to move the boxes into position before the arm control constraint started working which means that once the first box was being constraint by the arm control, all the other duplicates started following the translation values of the first box. (So that didn’t work out too well)

Next I tried duplicating the box but deleting the parent constraints and re-doing it all over again, initially I simply did it the way the Maya online tutorial did it, unfortunately it was here that I found the root of the problem, for parent constraint to work, it needed a rest position, however that also means that object has to remain there and couldn’t be moved from that position unless a constraint was acting on it, in which case for my animation that would means either the moving platform or the arm control to start acting upon it.

Hence I tried looking online for help however I did not find information that would help my predicament, thus initially I was ready to set small objects on the conveyor belt that the audience wouldn’t see during the animation but they would act as constraints moving the box from one position to another however that means it would also result in many key frame being keyed throughout the animation, just I was just ready to disembark on this painful venture, my fellow animator came to suggest an idea to me that would solve my problem.

He suggested using the same box for the animation since the robot arm could only carry one box at a time, it also means I could use re-use that box but it simply required me to re-position the box outside the camera view, hence from there it was just a matter of optical illusion, by making the box that moved on the conveyor belt disappear just as the box that had the constraint appear so that the animation would seem smooth.

It was a genius idea! Not only did that make it easier for me as the animator, it also made sense that this should have been the better approach given that it meant less computing cycle was to be consumed for the animation as well.

Robot Emotions

After solving the problem of the parent constraints I now had to do the robot animation, for this I relied heavily on the example used by Pixar animation of Luxor Junior. I studied their animation of the lamp being surprised noticing their application of the principle anticipation where the big lamp bend over before making a sudden upward jerking to signify a surprised or shocked impression. Adapting that idea into my animation I tried to incorporate that idea into my animation as the boxes started flooding in, however due to my lack of expertise using the graph editor as mentioned above, I faked all of those expression making good use of timing.

After that I asked myself how would I react if I saw something that greatly surprised me, I would examine it closer was the first thing that I could think of, hence I incorporated that idea as well into my animation where the arm rotated left and right to get a closer look of the row of boxes. Once again I made use of timing to convey that idea in my animation, also I used easing in and easing out to make the animation more believable, at the same time maintain motion that was faster than normal to show that it was still in the state of surprise.

Lastly, I wanted to show Toby getting a major shock when it realizes that the length of the boxes coming in stretches for miles before making him place the box at a much faster speed, for that once again I look for reference in the Luxor Junior animation and realized how the big lamp gave a very exaggerated movement of shock when the big ball came, hence using that idea I incorporated that into my animation as well before making Toby move the box at a much faster pace.

Now after putting 2 boxes and looking to see if there was still an endless stream of boxes, I wanted to show Toby being in a state of frustration, for that I consulted my tutor again, and he and I discussed the idea of it being frustrated and then finishing the animation of by whacking one of the boxes of the conveyor belt/platform. I decided that I would make the robot do what I always do when I’m frustrated (besides swearing :P), I would always smack my palm to my forehead and shake my head, since the robot has no hands to smack, I settled for making it shake its head furiously before smacking one of the boxes towards the camera, after playing with the timing involved for the animation as wells as applying the ease in and ease out motion for the robot arm, I succeeded in making a satisfactory animation :D

PS: Unfortunately only the first animation could be showed, I don't know why blogger is not letting me upload the rest of the animation I chose.