This week in Ting’s class we focused on creating a single golden pose in 3D, without relying on animation reference. The aim was to communicate emotion clearly through body language alone. I explored poses that suggest sadness or regret, paying close attention to weight distribution, line of action, and silhouette, while checking the pose from multiple angles to make sure it worked in 3D space.
Alongside this, we were introduced to a simple acting brief using the juice box rig. After fixing the falling animation, one juice box “comes to life” and reacts using pantomime only, with no audio. The focus was on blocking, strong poses, timing, and believable weight rather than polished animation.
This week reinforced how much emotion and storytelling can be communicated through clear poses and body mechanics, even with very simple characters and setups.
This week in Ting’s class, the focus was on showing weight through animation. The assignment was to animate two juice cartons falling, one empty and one full, to clearly communicate the difference in mass and weight. The animation was kept short (24–72 frames) and shown from side views and a 45-degree angle.
When planning this, I focused on how timing, acceleration, and impact change depending on weight. The full carton falls with more force and settles more heavily, while the empty carton feels lighter and less grounded. Small differences in spacing and follow-through helped sell this contrast.
Alongside this, I continued analysing golden poses, studying strong body poses in animation and breaking them down by focusing on clear silhouettes and weight distribution. This reinforced how even simple poses can clearly communicate physical properties like balance and mass.
This week helped me better understand how weight, timing, and pose clarity work together to make animation feel believable.
This week in Ting’s class we focused on animation analysis, specifically identifying strong golden poses in existing animated shots. The aim was to observe good animation and break it down by focusing on clear body key poses, ignoring facial animation to better understand posture, balance, and line of action.
By analysing frames from animated scenes, I looked at how the body is arranged to communicate intent and movement clearly. Drawing over the poses helped highlight strong silhouettes, weight distribution, and how the arms, torso, and legs work together to guide the viewer’s eye.
This exercise showed how much information can be communicated through a single strong pose. Studying animation frame by frame helped me better understand how professional animators use clear body poses to sell motion and character, which I can now apply to my own animation work.
For this assignment, we had to animate a full-body mechanic, so I started by searching for reference material to study realistic movement. I decided to take on a fairly challenging animation, which pushed me to think more carefully about body weight and motion. During the process, we realized it worked better to keep the character’s body attached to the cube, so the hands would stay grounded and consistent throughout the animation.
After switching the animation fully to spline, I ran into some challenges. I’m still having quite a bit of trouble with my character sliding instead of staying grounded, which makes the movement feel less natural than intended.
I created a blocked and stepped animation for my ultimate walker, but I’m still having some difficulties fully understanding this workflow. While it helps to focus on poses and timing, I sometimes struggle to see how everything will translate into a smooth final animation. It’s something I’ll need more practice with to really get comfortable.
This week was mainly about planning and gathering references. Since drawing isn’t really my strong point, working with visual references feels like a much more effective way for me. Using references made the process clearer and helped me stay focused while planning the next steps of my walking ball.
Before animating, I studied the key walk poses: contact, down, passing, and up. Planning these poses helped me understand how weight shifts from one leg to the other and how the hips move in relation to the legs. I also checked the motion in front view to make sure the hip movement felt balanced and believable.
This task reinforced the importance of clear structure and weight transfer in walk cycles. Focusing on blocking and strong key poses made the motion easier to read and provided a solid foundation to build on in later animation passes.
This week’s assignment focused on planning a basic walk cycle, with the aim of creating two full cycles over 48–50 frames. The animation was limited to side view and blocking only, with the walk translating from left to right across the screen, rather than walking on the spot.
This week’s task was to plan and animate a ball with a tail, focusing on clear planning and simple motion before adding complexity. The animation was restricted to side view only, blocking only, and a 100-frame limit at 24fps, which helped keep the focus on fundamentals.
I began by sketching the motion path of the ball and then planning how the tail would follow and overlap the main body. Looking at reference, such as squirrels, helped me understand the relationship between the body and tail, especially how the tail drags behind and catches up after direction changes. I planned areas where the tail would stretch, squash, and overlap to enhance the sense of weight and flexibility.
This exercise reinforced the importance of secondary motion, timing, and overlap. Keeping the animation simple allowed me to focus on clarity and strong motion, rather than detail, and helped me better understand how tails and similar appendages should behave in animation.
I need to make sure the tail reacts correctly to the movement of the ball instead of moving at the same time or in the wrong direction. The tail should always lag behind the ball, clearly showing overlap and follow-through, so it feels attached and affected by the ball’s motion.
I also need to adjust the direction and timing of the tail, making sure it consistently trails opposite to the direction of movement and only swings wider when there is enough speed or impact. Right now, the tail movement feels too independent, which makes the motion less believable.
Finally, I need to refine the tail’s settling after the landing. The ball should come to rest first, while the tail continues to move and gradually settles, creating a clearer sense of weight and physics.
