Animating my character

Now that .... is fully boned and skinned, the only thing left to do is animate.

For my first part of the animation I wanted to create a walking sequence. Because I didn't do it the easy way by creating a biped, its not very easy to walk.

The walk

I studied a walking sequence to see how it should be done:

To start the animation I moved .......... into the first position of the above image. I checked the timeline below that it was on 0, and then selected Auto Key(which turned red) . 10 frames later, I chose the second position,making sure that Auto Key was still selected. I had to make sure that for the second position the head of the character goes down otherwise she would stretch. I did the same for all the positions, spaced out by 10 frames, and kept going until I returned to the first position again.

I worked on the arms and legs separately. First of all I did all the positions of the legs, and then secondly I went thorough all the stages for the arms. I did them separately as not to get confused.

Once the first walk cycle is completely done, this can be repeated now for a walk.

Here is my first attempt at the walk cycle. In this my character has not been smoothed, as I found it easier to work with her when she was just her original materials.

This is the first walk so is not perfect whatsoever, It is not very womanly or feminine. To make her more feminine I decided to study Jessica Rabbit.

In the film " who framed roger rabbit" there is a sequence where she walks up and down the stage.

I watched this sequence many times to see how I could make my character walk more like her.

What I did notice was that , She walked with one foot in front of the other. This is also how models walk down the catwalk. I watched videos of models walking down the catwalk to learn how they did it.
This is a very feminine and sexy way to walk. I tried to adapt the animation to this , by just moving the foot in the animated sequence, for one foot to be in front of the other.

In the video of Jessica Rabbit she uses her arms to shape her hips. This is very womanly and feminine.

I put each hand on my characters waist, and kept them there throughout the the walk.
Every 10th frame, as one leg was forward, I made the opposite shoulder poke out, giving the impression of a girly femine walk.















Now that I have the walk completed I am going to do another feminine sexy action. This is to blow a kiss.

I looked at how Jessica rabbit, Betty Boop and Marilyn Monroe, blew kisses, and tried to copy it


Blowing a kiss


Betty Boop is known as the first and one of the most famous sex symbols on the animated screen. This is a very known pose for her, and I would love to create this with my character.





Here is an image the infamous Marilyn Monroe, blowing a Kiss to the camera.

I am going to add this action to my sequence. This will be affecting my characters hand and head and maybe shoulders.

For the lips I took some pictures of a Friend, in the pout position and the normal, as I wanted to see what actually happens to the lips when they are blowing a kiss. I found these photos very useful. (imageS) I viewed them zoomed in, and, when Lola was going to blow a kiss, I set the autokey and changed the Lip to the pout phase. This made it look alot more affective.

To move my shoulders I moved the shoulder bones, which then moved the arm bones.I also ad to move the head slightly otherwise it looked weird.

The hands were a very annoying part of the model as Lola's hand bones, always seemed to twist and turn the way I didn't want them. I spent hours going over bits that I had done. I think it all came down to however the AutoKey. I found sometimes that it didn't work , and as I pressed it, I would carry on and save my work, yet the autosave hadn't registered.

Adding Some Text

I thought I wold add a little bit of Text saying "Lola" just to introduce my character. I did this by using the line tool. I wanted to give the text a bright "girly" affect so I chose the Glow affect.

Firstly In the materials editor, I made my lines thickness 5, as i wanted them to stand out. I then set the properties to fallout. I then selected the colour as I bright Pink/Purple colour.

I increased self ulimination to 100.

In the render setup, I set the custom output to HDTV and changed the width setting below it ,to 720.

To add the affect, I went to rendering, effects and add Lenz affect. I then selected glow from the parameters.

In the options menu below, I decreased the size to 1, and increased the source colour.

Adding Music

The most typical sexy song, that I could think of, which has been in many films was Joe Loss, and his orchestra, "The Stripper". Automatically when this songs comes on, you are given the impression of sex appeal and a woman. I chose this for obvious reasons as I thought it would be a good song to portray famine and flirtatious behaviour.

The song was 3 minutes long. I wanted to shorten it down to the first small part of it. I did this by using Audacity. Audacity enabled me to cut the song,and fade it out so it didnt sound so sharp in the ending.

Now that the song was edited, I saved it and used a software package to convert it into WAV format, as 3DMax will only work with WAVS.

To insert it into my scence, I extended the timeline at the bottom with the Open Mini Curve button to the left of it. In the options down the side I then selected sound, Add sound and inserted my WAV. This automatically inserted into the WaveForm.

Scaling my animation

Now that the music is on the animation, I watched a preview of it. I noticed that Lola was walking very fast for the music, So i wanted to slow it down. In Betty Boop and Jessica Rabbits, she certainly was not in a rush to go anywhere so i decided to slow it down.

To slow my walk down I selected all my leg bones and went into the MiniCurve editor.

I then selected "Keys" at the top and "Scale" and then I dragged the current keys to the right, whilst dragging the keys ,all the frames stretch out . I played around with this setting until I found the right speed for her walk. All the Keys which went past 90 Frames I deleted as I wouldn't be needing them.

Cameras

I wanted my use of cameras to be simple. I wanted show show Lola at different angles, but put more attention on her kiss at the end, and her shape and figure.

Firstly I created the path I wanted the camera to follow, I did this by selecting the Top, and front view ports, I could then see where I wanted the camera to go . I used the Line tool and made a shape, from behind Lola, going around to the side, and ending up at the front of her, zooming into her face.

I chose this path, as it could show, the shape of her bum, hips, the way she walked and then finally her blowing a kiss at the end.

The camera I used was a "free camera". I I positioned my Free Camera on the screen and then assigned a Path Constraint Controller. I did this by selecting the camera, going to the motion panel and selecting assign controller. I then selected "Path Constraint" I then selected my Line, and the camera attached itself to the line.

When I followed the timeline the camera followed along the path, however, it didn't really know where to point. Just like all the other parts of the animation I selected AutoKey at the positions I wanted it to change direction and used the rotate tool to the camera to make it point in the right direction.