Last Maya assignment. We are given this character that someone else modelled and rigged. The task is to make him jump twice. It can be any sort of jump. My friends said that my characters always move in a happy way.

The previous onion boy walked as if he had a spring in his step. This one did a happy hop.

Most of my classmates are more ambitious/faster or have more time. My friend searched parkour out on the net and did two jump across two walls and miss on the second wall, climbs over and falls down on the other side. My animation is smoother than hers but it’s way simpler. Another is going to animate a very complicated series of jumps from ground upwards into a winding staircase. I need to learn to be faster damn it. Everything I do is so damn slow. I can’t let go once I find my animation too jumpy. I keep spending time adding more keyframes and adjusting to make it smoother or I just can’t move on to expand the scope.

As per the title, this is the final result although yes it still has the moustache problem. I saw Joann’s comment after this is done and submitted.

Had I had the time, I would have…

1. Put in rain
2. Put sea foam on the backwash of the waves
3. Fix moustache
4. Add lightning

Oh well, the next time I paint in Photoshop, it should be faster. Now I’m just trying out tutorials and experimenting. Deviantart’s tutorials are damn good…

3rd animation assignment was to do a walk cycle. Animate the character given (onion boy) to walk a minimum of 4 steps. Again, some of my classmates did a more cartoony walk. I did a normal one but I also know that this one is a bit too robotic. The legs look ok to me but the body is still too stiff even though I already made the hip sway a little and the top of the head bounce a little.

Because this blog is dying and I have nothing to post…

I still have not gotten any of my 24 drawings I did in the first three months. I’ve just finished my Maya animation course. A total of 4 animations. I’ll just post 3. The second one is boring. Here’s the first of the series of assignments.

We’re supposed to learn how to use Maya basically and make one heavy ball, one rubber ball roll together and react. The rubber ball must stretch and squash. The timing of both balls and their rotations must be believable.

Some of my classmates did a more exaggerated bounce since it’s animation afterall. I just chose to do one that feels realistic.