07. 3D MAYA EXERCISES

TERM 1

First animation of Bonky. A simple animation of Bonky jumping from one side to another.

The next animation is a mood change expression walk. Bonky takes a nonchalant walk and is taken aback by the sudden appearance of the dinosaur. Bonky then jumps and runs away as fast as it could.

This one is an animation practice of another character named Binky. I tried to animate him walking in a funny and a creepily flirty way as I wanted to tell a story of Binky being in a nightclub.

This was my first lipsync animation exercise of Binky. It was fun to focus on the expressions of Binky to tell the story rather than dynamic movements like previous animations.

TERM 2

At the start of term 2, we learned about modeling and were given the task to model a gingerbread. 

This modeling process turned out well, however, I did not consider the weight of the head in comparison with the body which made the body look incredibly odd and stretched when the character was moved. 

To proceed with the animation exercises, we used a base model (right) that was assigned to us and designed a character with our own unique details. My character has 3 eyes, bunny ears and is named Bunino (left). 

We were tasked to move around our characters to get a feel in animating characters that we modelled.

We also learned about manipulating shapes in Maya and combining them into one. Using the Laban Movement Analysis as reference, we created a base shape and several shapes deriving from it, so that the base shape could easily be manipulated into different shapes with the controls in Maya. 

Combining these 2 together, I created a scene where the manipulated shape meets Bunino to further my understanding of animating my own character and also animating a manipulated shape. 

Using the skills I’ve learned in this pathway, I would like to model my own characters from scratch and learn how to animate them so I can implement 3D aspects in my future animation projects.