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CAGD 493 Week 14

 As this semester is coming to an end, it is time to look at the progress I have done and reflect on what I can improve in the future and what I have learnt. My main objective this semester was to work on quadruped characters since I don't have any experience in that area. 

I started by creating a walk cycle of a tiger. I found exploring all the controls quite difficult. Another obstacle I have encountered, was that I couldn't be my own reference for the movement. In my animation process, I like to get up and observe my own body when doing a specific movement. When animating an animal, I can't really do that much because animals move so much differently than humans. Because of that, I needed to look at a lot of references available for me online. 


These are GIFs with the tiger walk cycle I have created. I think I did a good job improving the work by incorporating the feedback I got in class. I found that I enjoy having more freedom in making the movement less realistic and more cartoony and overexaggerated. Because of that, for the next project, I have moved into creating a cartoony run cycle of a dog. 

  For this project, finding the reference was even more difficult, because what I wanted to create was not a realistic run cycle of a dog, so just watching videos of dogs running wasn't enough help for me. I ended up using a 2D animation as a reference, the only issue of that being a reference is that it was a flat character and I wanted to translate a flat animation to a 3D world. I found that quite challenging, but I highly enjoyed giving the character personality. 



Looking back at this project, I am happy with it and I think it is expressive. It was definitely a fun exploration but the lack of reference for an animation like this was an obstacle. 

For my third animation, I wanted to stick with the dog rig for a little bit longer because I liked how many opportunities it gave me to be expressive. I chose to do a quick animation of the dog collapsing because of how tired it was. I have found an animated reference for the action that has really helped me. The one huge difference between bipeds and quadrupeds is that bipeds have one hips whereas dogs have front and back paws so not only I needed to keep in mind how to move them in relation to each other but also offset them so they look natural. This was definitely a challenge with my 3rd animation. I have also looked into the different options the rig gave me and tried learning how to push the rig to the fullest. I really enjoyed creating this animation. 
For my last animation, I have decided to go back to animating a biped, however I wanted to stick to the creature theme and chose a biped tiger rig. For the movement, I decided on a side kick. For this, I have used references found online but also I could reference the movement for myself while animating and as I have mentioned before, I find that very helpful. This animation is not yet finished, but I really like where it is going. I have practiced setting moving holds in this animation, in the cycles I have created earlier, I wasn't doing that so a review on how to do that was quite useful for me. a big lesson from this piece so far was that if I don't like something, sometimes it's better to scratch it and start some moments over rather than try to fix it. I have really struggled with the hands and after spending a lot of time trying to fix it, I have deleted all the keys on them and reanimated them. They are still unpolished and need more work but they look much better than before. This is where the animation is now: 

Overall, I feel like I have achieved my goals for the semester, I have worked really hard on developing these pieces and I think they show progress and I feel a lot more comfortable with animating quadrupeds than I did before. If I was approaching this semester again, I think maybe I would try do a little bit more of a small pieces of animation like my third piece, I really like how I was able to put emotions and expressions into it and I think it will look great in my demo reel. 







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