The basic physics in 3D animation

Recently I had to submit an assessment that shows how competent I am in representing physics in 3D from the real world. I thought I did well, so did my classmates. It was challenging at first trying to think of what I should do for my animation, we had a choice of two complexity levels, A & B, within those complexity levels were three other choices of different scenes we could animate. I chose to create the higher complexity level, B, to give myself a challenge and have chosen to have my character "jump on and off an object then settle"... easier said than done.

What my teacher has taught me is that without planning and research there is no animation. Time to get some references from my reliable pal, YouTube, and search what we're all probably thinking... funny cats. Wait, not what you were thinking? I guess parkour will do as well also.

Luckily I used to know of a parkour athlete back then who has a YouTube channel, LaFlairParkour. This guy has got awesome tutorials and parkour videos of him jumping and running around in streets and parkour venues. I found just what I was looking for, a video that he uploaded very recently of him jumping from rail to rail in the city.
 

I like this video because you can see the follow through of the hips, the way he uses his arms to give him that extra momentum especially at the last jump and the impact he creates that affects his whole body and the railings as he lands. I used this for reference but this video didn’t have him settling so I took a look at his other videos and found one where Jesse sticks the landing.
 

This landing continues as if he just jumped a railing and I thought it works pretty well. I sketched some thumbnails to get an idea of exactly what I was doing for each pose, and timing each jump by the amount of frames it takes to get from one railing to another.

Now that I have planned and researched what I am doing, it is now time to put that research to good use. For every animation we must start with the blocking stage. I am using AnimationMentor's rig Stewart because he seems to fit in my action scene with that lanky body... and because he's the only one who showed up for auditions. The blocking stage was simple and seemed okay for the starting structure, I didn't put a lot of breakdowns between the poses for the first stage of blocking.

After receiving some feedback from my teacher and classmates, I made some adjustments and added something at the start and the end, the anticipation and the conclusion, also because the scene was too short. The scene must be at least 150 frames to 250 frames running at 25 fps, therefore I had to find a way to increase it's run time.

Without asking for feedback, which I should have done, I moved onto splining the animation and making some more adjustments.

After receiving even more feedback and making more adjustments I happily animated my way to the final animation. This took a while, but thanks to my animation mentor for having taught me about the basics and flow of animation like reverse C shapes and follow throughs, which they explained very well, I have created my best artwork that I never had thought I would achieve in animation. I think it's close to what it represents.

Finally, the final animation of the final assessment, due the final week of this semester.

Bouncy ball with a tail assignment

This is an assignment I created of a beach ball and a bouncy ball with a tail. It's more of a character.

I tried to animate the tail ball to act like a cat.
It was quite hard looking for a proper video of a cat jumping or bouncing for reference.

 

I found a video of a giant beach ball falling from a building.

I found it as a good example of bounce physics.

Trying to focus on the hip and tail of a cat,

this image helped by showing that the tail.

 

These videos show the tails animation when the cat jumps, it is stretched and used for momentum.

All references are from Youtube and Google.

Animation by Ali Zreik.

Sci-Fi Genre

Treasure Planet 2002

Treasure Planet 2002

With such a wide array of genres to choose from, our minds are attracted immediately to what we find the most interesting and exciting. New innovations are not only great wonders, but also intrigue us and give us insight on what is yet to come. Hence, that’s why science fiction, or Sci-Fi for short, is one of the most popular and fastest growing genres in the film industry. Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginative content such as futuristic settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, time travel, faster than light travel, parallel universes and extraterrestrial life.

As sci-fi films contain mainly experiments of the future, many movies also merge past experiences with today’s fast growing technologies, such as Jurassic World; a movie which combines the pre-historic times of extinct dinosaurs with the 21st century using new technological advancements. The movie expresses what is known to be impossible, the return of extinct life, through regenerating DNA and creating a world with past, present and even what could be the future.

Jurassic World 2015

When watching a sci-fi movie, you expect to be amazed, intrigued and even astonished with what you have just witnessed, as you see innovations you never thought possible. Sci-fi movies can make you think twice, would there really be a time where we will be able to go to a theme park with actual dinosaurs as the main attraction?

The Matrix Revolutions 2003

Although film-makers do not like to associate their films with one specific genre, the sci-fi genre is not one to be overlooked. It’s noticeably the main theme of any sci-fi film. In the feature-length film, The Matrix, although made in 1999, it evidently shows the possibilities of futuristic developments, through travelling between two different worlds at a specific time, a sub-genre known as post-cyberpunk.

Treasure Planet 2002

Treasure Planet 2002

The film, Treasure Planet, depicts “the future from an 18th century perspective” (Ron Clements, 2002). Treasure Planet is an ingeniously innovative, nevertheless faithful adaptation of Robert L. Stevenson’s literary classic, Treasure Island.





Instead of roaring waves and forceful swells, the ship is hit by space storms, cosmic debris and a black hole. Rather than a peg leg and an eye patch, John Silver sports a mechanical leg, cybertronic eye and a right arm that functions like a high-tech Swiss army knife. Therefore, by altering a classic 18th century story of adventure to a modernized, steampunk world gives writers limitless possibilities.



Blu-Ray Disc, Treasure Planet 2002 by Disney Pixar Studios
DVD, The Matrix Revolutions 2003 by Warner Bros.
Screenshots from Jurassic World Trailer, Youtube.
[https://courses.highered.tafensw.edu.au/mod/resource/view.php?id=93465]

[http://www.pluggedin.com/movie-reviews/treasureplanet]