Stop Motion

I have only worked on one stop motion project in my life, and boy was it challenging. I created a little skit in which a bunch of Mentos pull pranks on each other. I used a webcam to capture each individual frame. I had to pick up the webcam and hold it over the desk in the right place so I could take good shots. This was by far the worst part, because sometimes my hands would shake and the picture would get blurry. In the end, I was glad that I made the project look decent, but I would polish it if I could. I need to find the recording of that animation so I can relive those memories.

Inspirations for animating

Sometimes when I am walking to class, I look around at my surroundings. I see other people walking, talking, etc. Sometimes I see crazy arguments going on in public, or someone running around playing the saxophone. When its raining, I look up at the thousands of drops falling from the sky. Ever since I began using Maya, I noticed that there is a lot of animation going on behind each of these events. So many complicated movements that can be attributed to a certain emotion, or an individual. It is truly amazing how we can associate these movements with something, and we don't even realize it. A lot of times, the people that act strange and/or crazy can be the most animated, in a sense. They often have awkward, and exaggerated movements, almost like a cartoon. These people can be fun to observe, sometimes I think about how I would animate certain movements in my head.

Toy Story

When I was younger, I loved Disney movies. Lion King, Beauty and the Beast were some of my favorites. Then I found out they made a movie called "Toy Story". I had an assortment of toys, so I was highly interested in seeing this movie. I was amazed at how the characters came to life, and how extremely detailed everything looked. The animations were all clean, and the characters had so much life to them. Of course when I was a little kid, I overlooked all of this. I wanted to get the Woody and Buzz toys, hoping that they would talk to me. Now that I look back, I realize how much time and effort was made into creating this movie. It must have taken countless hours to get the personalities of the characters just right, and I cannot even imaging how long it took to render the whole movie. Someday I hope I can work on a wonderful project like Toy Story.

Making a walk cycle

Animating a walk cycle sounds easy, but there is a lot of thinking involved behind the process. Most of the time we do not think about how we walk since it comes so naturally to us. The arms often move back and forth, one foot rises, moves forward, then lowers itself. It can be looped into an endless cycle. A lot of times, we can often tell how a person feels just by how they are walking. If their head is low and bobbing as they walk, they may be depressed or tired. If their shoulders are held high and they are taking large strides, we can assume they are extremely happy, or a bit odd. These emotions have to be considered when animating a walk cycle. The hips may be square, or they may be moving forward when the shoulders are moving backward, and vice versa. The elbows may be swinging freely with the shoulders, or be completely straight like a robot. I realized that a lot more goes into a walk cycle than just the movement of the legs and feet.

Fighting Games and Animation

When I was a kid, I always played my Gameboy. I was enthralled by games such as Pokemon, Tetris, and Donkey Kong. The Gameboy introduced many children of my generation to gaming. To this day, I still am an avid gamer, that is if I don't have work to do. One day my friend and I tried out Street Fighter II on the Sega Genesis. We were captivated by the graphics, the sounds, and most of all, the characters. Each of the characters were memorable in their own ways, their stage themes, special moves, and personalities made each of them unique. Of course we were just kids, so we chose Blanka, E.Honda, and Chun Li mashing buttons so their specials would come out. Now that I look back, each of the character's animations were well thought out. Ryu's fighting stance makes it look like he's on his toes, waiting to strike or defend. Zangief's fighting stance tells all of us that he is a wrestler, and if he throws you it is going to hurt. Blanka's jump animation makes him look like a wild beast pouncing on its prey. These small details told us a lot about the character's style and personality. From this point on, I became a big fan of Capcom video games.

Animation in Video Games

The graphics of video games constantly make huge leaps forward as time passes.  Character models have realistic textures and features.  More companies moved towards 3-D models when consoles could handle them. However, the motions of the characters still seem a bit rigid to me.  No matter how lifelike a character can appear in a game such as Call of Duty, there are always some glitches or clipping issues that may take away the realism.  Of course, these kinds of video games will always have these graphical issues no matter what. The level of detail in the character model makes it prone to errors in rigging. Of course, there are many different graphical styles used in video games.  There are many games that use hand drawn graphics or sprites.  Although these sprites seem like cartoons in appearance, they have almost limitless possibilities in animation. They have their own challenges to work with however.  Personally, I miss this sort of animation in video games nowadays.  I like 3-D animation as much as the next person, but I think that video games should continue to incorporate animated sprites as well. Part of this desire comes from the nostalgia factor and the amount of creativity that can go into sprites.

Hello

My name is Mark Hayase, and I want to learn 3-D animation and web design. I will use this blog to post my progress over time. I want this blog to serve as a comments section for the projects posted on my website.