Week 7-Creating ident 2 part 4

To begin my work on this part I opened up the file with all the playground equipment in and then imported the additional parts needed to create the scene, these being the bear, the balloons and the robot. I then scaled each of these objects down by setting the scale coordinates to the same value as in part 3 of this ident before positioning them in the scene. For two of the balloons and the robot I did this by altering the move tool coordinates so they were in the exact same place as in part 3. This was not necessary for the bear and the red balloon as I had planned for them to start in a different place. However, I was careful to position them roughly above the spot on the bench they took off from. Finally I positioned the legs so that they hung below the body as they did when he took off from the bench.

Next I added a camera to the scene. I decided to use a target camera as I wanted the focal point to be the same throughout the animation. When positioning the camera I was careful to get a clear shot of Ted with the balloon, but not let this fill the shot and block the view of the playground beneath. Also to make it clear that the bear was still above the playground I was conscious that some of the play equipment was visible.

Afterwards I grouped Ted and the balloon. Then I selected this group and the camera and, using auto key, I moved the objects upwards on the last frame of this section.

This went quite well, however it was not quite the rate of movement I wanted. I did consider editing the group’s position in the last frame but as I plan to add more animation to these objects I felt it would be better moving the ground away in case I needed to do alterations in the graph editor as too many lines may be confusing. So I selected the objects on the ground and moved this downwards between the first and last frame.

I was now happy with the rate that the bear floated upwards, but felt it looked quite boring. Therefore I decided it would be worth adding rotation to be bear and balloon, once again using auto key. I played around with this for a while and during the experiment found a really effective method of animation. This was making the bear disappear under the balloon at the end of the timeline and so kept this in place. For this I also used the move tool to make sure the top of the balloon stayed in shot throughout.

As the animation was complete I went on to position the robot. I had planned for him to be looking shocked as the bear floated away. This character will not be animated and so he will instead be posed to get the effect I want. I will be starting with the arms.

To begin I selected the lower arm bones and positioned them so that they were bent inwards towards the body. Next I rotated the whole of the arm round so that the hands were covering the mouth.

Afterwards I rotated the cylinder I had used for the mouth to create an unhappy facial expression.

Next I positioned the legs. I rotated the lower leg bones to create a bend on the knees. This was done to allow him to look towards the bear as he floated away. This may seem a bit of a peculiar way for the character to look upwards, but it was the only possible way due to the way I chose to construct the robot, this being limiting the movement in the body and head as it was meant to be made out of an inflexible metal, I could not bend the spine or neck for this movement.

Then I selected the robot as a whole and rotated him backwards so his feet were flat on the ground as he looked up to the sky.

When I looked at the scene through the camera viewpoint the robot was upside down looking in the wrong direction and so I moved where he stood in the scene so that from the cameras viewpoint the robot was looking at the bear. This took some time as I wanted to keep him as close as possible to the position he started in, but without compromising the direction he was looking in. Eventually I got a position I was happy with.

The last step was to rescale the timeline so it lasted for the full duration of this section, this being 2½ seconds. However, when I did this the bear became deformed and I could not reverse this action. Therefore this needs to be redone at a later date.