Lucy Rig Reel

Lucy Rig Reel

Lucy was a rig I did in my undergrad before FIEA.  Unlike the rigs I created in FIEA, she is built for film.  She appears as the secondary and hero character in the University of Central Florida's Character Animation short animated film, Delivery.  Overall, she has been the most difficult rig I've had to work on.  Some parts of Lucy were rigid, while others were flexible, and in some places she was both rigid and flexible.  What made Lucy so difficult was the fact that I was learning how to rig while rigging her and she is the most complicated character in the character animation program's history.  It took me my entire senior year, and a lot of very late nights, to rig her and make her perfect.  Some of the parts on her that really tripped me up was her collar, front paws, the skeleton spine on top of her actual spine, and adding the back toes to her back feet.  Each of these problems needed a lot of research to have it rigged correctly, hours of troubleshooting and testing, or both.  Overall, Lucy is my favorite rig I have created.  Anytime I show Lucy, everyone loves her character.  Because I created the animation for her while at FIEA, I added it to the beginning of her rigging reel.  The music is called Summer Time by MorningLightMusic.

Lucy Walk Cycle Reel

Lucy Walk Cycle Reel

This is an animation I've worked on for a period of time.  Lucy was a character I rigged and animated in undergrad and has continued to be a character I'm constantly learning from.  With this animation I learned more about quadrupeds and how they move.  Quadrupeds are more difficult to animate then you might think.  My biggest learning experience with this animation was the idea of how her upperbody moves in correlation with how her lowerbody moves.  I also learned about adding fidgets to walk cycles and how they bring personality and life to characters.  I was very inspired by how my own dog Rivers moves and acts as both Lucy and Rivers have similar personalities.  Both of them also have similar physical characteristics such as big floppy ears.   One of the signature actions my dog does is to stick her tongue out and close her mouth with an excited and playful facial expression.  She does this when she's very excited to play with her toys.  With Lucy I wanted to have the same signature action but Lucy style with exaggerated movements in her ears and tongue.   I also learned more about facial animation as Lucy's face is a skull and in the moment she looks over, she needs to look happy and smile.  When Animating the head I actually never thought about the curves that the head motion makes.  The big indicator to visualize Lucy's curves was her nose.  I was constantly watching Lucy's nose to see what kind of curves her head motion was creating.  After understanding her head motion I worked on her ears and learned about how they drag behind and the floppy look they can give when being dragged.  Overall it was a super fun experience animating Lucy and learning more about characters that are just like her!  For animating Lucy I worked in Autodesk Maya 2020 and for rendering I used Pixar's Renderman!  The music is called Summer Time by MorningLightMusic. 

Persy Walk Cycle Reel

Persy Walk Cycle Reel

I've updated this reel from the previous reel that I created for Persy.  Since I created a walk cycle for Lucy, I decided to also create a walk cycle for the main character from Delivery, Persy.  Because I also typically work with animals, mostly canine like animals, I thought it would be a fun challenge to animate a biped too.  Persy's model and rig are from the University of Central Florida's Character Animation program "Delivery" film.  

My biggest learning curve from working with Persy was the fact that she has hair and it needed to move and react to how her head and body are moving.  I also learned that hair reacts and moves differently as you get further into animating the ends of the hair.  It's essentially long chain with each reacting to what the chain before it is reacting to.

Another big lesson was the animation curve Persy's arms created when moving forward and back.  I never thought about how arms gain and lose momentum and how the wrist and hands react to that movement.  As the arms lose momentum the wrists have follow through and catch up as the arms are beginning to gain momentum. The hands then also react as the fingers get closer and further apart. 

The last big lesson I learned was about facial animation.  Persy has her limits on her facial rig, she can be very expressive or very subtle.  If you combine  too many controller's Persy's face will start to cave inwards in some areas.  I have never been comfortable pushing Persy's face to it's limit but with this animation I really played around with what her expressions are and how I can creatively make her look happy without breaking her rig. 

Overall, this animation has taught me a lot about how the body moves on a biped and how it effects other parts for follow through animation.  This animation is definitely not quite completed yet as I need to work on Persy's fidget sometime in the near future!  The music in the reel is called Typography by MorningLightMusic.

Simple Ball Bounce with Maya and Renderman

Simple Ball Bounce Reel

This is a simple ball bounce created in Autodesk Maya and rendered in Pixar's Renderman.  For this animation I had a total of 5 passes.  The ball rig is from UCF's FIEA program.

For my first pass of creating my ball bounce it was all about reference.  Finding reference that had an easy angle to work with an gave a good view of timing and how the ball was moving.   My first pass really was all about getting the timing of the ball, weight, and rotation. 

During my second pass I tweaked my rotation and used the graph editor to show more weight in my ball. I also brought in more squash and stretch when the ball hit the ground. At this point I set up my rendering scene for renderman and created my lights, material, and camera.

In my third pass I adjusted my rendering angle and gave the ball some jiggle as it is rolling and coming to a stop.  

For the fourth pass I focused on getting the ball to have a little more jiggle while it is in the air.

For my final pass I added more frames to the end of my animation and adjusted a few keyframes so that my ball comes to a softer and slower stop.