This week in 2D we learned about the priciple OVERLAP. This is where someone jumps forwards and when they land they topple or bend forwards a little due to the foward momentum, again this is exaggerated in animation to make it more obvious.
Our task was to take our block character (whom I have modified to make less oblong) and make them jump from position A to position B with an overlap at the end. Similar to the Ledge Jump, I needed to aticipate and then add squash and stretch with an overlap at the end. For this one I sketched out a plan of the of the most important keys to give me an idea of the timing and to keep the scaling correct. I completed a rough animation to give me an idea of what was missing and what I needed to do. This technique worked well because it identified that I was infact shrinking my character by about a third, so I needed to rectify that, I also needed to add a few frames in at the end to make the overlap match the force of the anticipation, and add a frame to make the apex of the jump more natural.
Having done that I feel that this animation is probably the most natural one so far, although my chracter does still shrink slightly so I need to practice my scaling, but other than that I'm pleased with it. I am looking forward to trying these techniques on more complicated characters.
Up until now we had just been getting to grips with the priciples of animating in Maya; moving around, getting the weight and timing right, and learning some of the functions of Maya. This week we started on squash and stretch balls that Georg had set up. So far it has been a nightmare, all I have managed to achieve is to make the ball look like a blob desperatley trying to hop away from the screen, I find all the graphs and key framing awkward, especially when the software doesn't do what you asked it to. But it'll get better, hopefully. I'll get a video of it up when it looks a little better.
Student Blog: Chronicles My development as a student of Animation at University College Falmouth
