This project was done during the first half of our final year, for this project I decided to improve on my animation skills before taking on my final year project.

Principles Of Animation

(The following is taken from my report The Use Of Emotion In Animation, as it refers to the principles that I have used throughout the project).

Throughout this project and whilst writing my report, I have refereed to a number of the principles of animation and stated why they are relevant to my project. The two that came up the most and are probably the most significant to my project are timing and exaggeration. These two principles are important to my project as both of them help to emphasise the movements and personality of my characters.

Timing is used to help convey a characters emotion and personality, if the timing of an animation is slower, then the character is likely in a sad mood however if the timing of the animation picks up then it is likely that the mood of the character has changed. If the timing of an animation is out the audience notice as the actions of the character will not reflect their emotion or personality, this would result in confusion among the audience as they wouldn't be able to follow the story.

Exaggeration is used in animation to make actions more readable and exciting then they would be in the real world. It can also be used to make certain features of the story or character stand out. It is important to not exaggerate too much in animation as the animation could start looking fake as the shot may become over crowded and the audience will not be able to follow the story.

Some other principles that I have applied to my project are Anticipation and Staging as both of these look at the movements of a character. Anticipation is what comes before the action and is likely the build up to the action or the character thinking about their movement, using anticipation in animation makes the animation look more realistic as the character is thinking about their actions before they move, the same way as a human would in the real world.

Staging can be used in animation to let the audience know what they need to be looking at on the screen, this way the attention of the audience will be focused on whatever you need them to be focusing on at that point. It will highlight what is important in that scene and what doesn’t require any real attention from the audience.

Maya Rig

I decided that i would create my own rig in maya, so that I could improve my skills and learn more about rigging. The skeleton I designed is shown below, I was pleased with how the skeleton turned out and in the second picture you can see how the skeleton could easily be positioned in the same way as the previous rig. The final picture is the skeleton after being attached to a character that I designed.

Screenshots: Scenes

Below are some screenshots from the animations I am working on