Symposium - The Artefact

The Animator's Survival Kit - Reference Images

So before I begin I would just like to highlight some reference material I used during this process. These images come from The Animator's Survival Kit. These images show some of the things we look for in animal locomotion in the form of an illustration. This lets us visualize what we are trying to achieve.

Extract from The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams

This image gives us an idea of where the ups and downs are, along with contact positions. This gives us a feel for how our animal moves. If we know this, realistically we can apply this to any four legged animal. As most four legged animals move the same, this is really helpful for all four legged animals. You do need to take in to account weight transference. This will be determined by the build of your animal. Is the animal big or small. Fast or built for endurance.

Extract from the book The Animators Survival Kit by Richard Williams

This image gives us a better feel for timing and spacing. It also gives us a closer look at the ups and downs, and the contact and pass positions through color coding:

• Black for contact positions
• Red for pass position
• Blue for the ups and downs

My process

For this artefact I drew up my own reference images. These images would help me visualize the movements I would like to have in our final game.

Simple line drawing of my animation

I used this drawing to get an idea of what I wanted the animation to look like. This allowed me to see the pass positions, where the pelvis raises and lowers and the way the head moves. This was just a basis, I later advanced on this.

A fleshed out version of the previous drawing

Another planned walk cycle for Haven

This version gives me a better look how the animals muscles would move. Allows me to see where weight transference is happening a bit better. When doing this, especially for a game, it is beneficial to use a pose to pose method of animating. This is where you create your starting pose and your end pose. Then you go back and fill in the gaps between. When you do a run animation for a game, make sure the start pose and end pose are the same. This ensures that the animation loops nicely.



Here is one of the walk animations we will have in the game on a custom rig for our companion character



Here is a CAT rig animated with a walk animation. Here you can see what I have been talking about in action.

This is the timeline for the animation. If you look closely this is made up of one animation looped over and over again.

Here is is the segmented part. This is what the full animation is made up of above. When you look at the animation above, the beginning frame and the end frame in this image are exactly the same.

Symposium - So how do animals move?

So I have looked in to Edweard Muybridge. His work has given me an understanding as to where the motion picture started and a slight understanding of how they move. Now lets take a deeper look in to this. Lets look more in to how they move and how that can be applied to animation. For this, I will be using the book 'The Animators Survival Kit by Richard Williams' among other resource materials which will be referenced later.

How animals move varies from animal to animal. It is all about evolution. Take for instance a Cheetah. A Cheetah must be able to move quickly, because its prey, Gazelle, moves fast too. If you look at a Cheetah you will notice certain characteristics of its body:

• Long, slim, muscular legs
• A small rounded head set upon a long neck
• A deep chest
• A long tail
• And a flexible spine

If you notice how it moves. When it runs you can see its back bend up and down. This motion allows him to swing his legs faster. He then uses his long tail to balance himself. Now lets look at the likes of hoofed herbivores. In this case we can take the Wildebeast, one of the Cheetahs prey, but you can see it in others like Zebras, Horses. These are all powerful runners, more-so built for endurance over speed. Because their movement is mostly used to flee rather than to chase, their movement is measured in Gaits. This is what Muybridge was working on. This includes walking, trotting, cantering, and galloping.

When a horse walks, he moves the front leg, and the opposite hind leg together. Trotting is similar but a bit faster, When the horse is cantering, three of the horses legs are off the ground at a given time. Finally when the horse gallops all four hooves are off the ground at a given time, and there is a point in time, just after the gallop, that all of the horses weight is on one leg. This can give you an idea of the amount of force that comes from a horse when running.

Now lets take this in to animation with the help of The Animators Survival Kit. Richard Williams gives a nice brief explanation of how a quadruped moves. He says "Four legged animals walk like two of us joined together - one slightly ahead of the other - two sets of legs slightly out of phase".

This might sound straight forward, but through my practice it is not. We still look for certain things when an animal moves, the same things we look for in bipeds: 

1. Contact Positions
2. Where are the ups and downs
3. Where is the weight
4. Whats the speed
5. Character
6. Differences in build

I will look in to more about this in the next post. For the next post I plan on making my own Rotascope animation. I will explain what Rotascoping is too in the next post.

An extract from The Animators Survival Kit by Richard Williams

 References

The Animators Survival Kit by Richard Williams

Symposium - Edweard Muybridge

It may be surprising to a lot of people that back in the 1880's, little was known on how objects moved. Everyone knew that objects moved, but how they moved was information they didn't really need to know at the time. This was before Edweard Muybridge got involved. Let me introduce Edweard Muybridge to you with a brief biography. Edweard Muybridge, born Edward Muggeridge in 1830 in England. He was unsatisfied with his life in England, so by 1850 he had moved to start his new life in the United States. After some time working as a book seller, he changed is name to Edweard Muybridge and took up photography. He soon gained renown for his photography with his images of Yosemite and Alaska.

His most famous piece of work began in 1872. He was hired by Leland Stanford to photograph horses. Stanford had placed a bet. He bet that when a horse moves, that there is a point when all of the hooves leave the ground. This was a difficult task to do as it was unheard of at the time. He did it by setting up a row of cameras rigged up with tripwires. When the horse hit a tripwire, the camera would take a picture. The cameras took multiple pictures, frame by frame. When the images were put together he discovered that yes, there is a point when a horse is galloping, that all hooves come off the ground as you can tell from the image below.

Horse in Motion by Edweard Muybridge

Muybridge's work was widely criticized. People stating that it was impossible and improbable that the a horse could achieve such a position. Muybridge countered this criticism by giving lectures on motion, and demonstrated his findings through his invention, a Zoopraxiscope.

Zoopraxiscope and wheel

With a zoopraxiscope, Muybridge was able to simulate the motion of a horse galloping. This was done by projecting his images in sequence, giving the illusion of movement. Images needed to be transferred to a glass disc and treated before showing. If Muybridge used the images he had, they would show up distorted. Because of this, Muybridge needed to take the pictures again. This time they were taken at an angle to make them appear wider, and then bending them to counter act the distortion of the disc. They were then laid out on in a circle. Then an artist, with great effort, would paint these images on to a glass disc. This was one of the first instances of motion picture.

References

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/windows/southeast/eadweard_muybridge.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLnxy_5Bpnc

http://www.biography.com/people/eadweard-muybridge-9419513

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/399928/Eadweard-Muybridge

Symposium - Animal Locomotion in Animation

In Haven all of our creatures so far are quadrupedal, meaning they have four legs. These move a lot different to bipedal creatures (two legs). This is the first time I have had any interaction with quadrupeds. As I am the animator for the game, it is my job to bring these creatures to life. Before I have always worked with bipeds. In our game last year 'Gone Nuts' our main character ran on two legs.

This is going to take a lot of research. I have tried practicing by trying to animate a CAT rig. I found this very hard as I found it difficult to visualize how quadrupeds move. No matter how many videos I watched it didn't help. The human brain can find it difficult to process fast moving objects. No matter how many times I looked at a dog walk, I knew it was walking but I just couldn't visualize it in different movements, instead of one big movement. I seen it's entire body move instead of how each leg moved. This made the animating of the CAT rig tough.

So for one of my modules in College, Advanced 3D Concept, I am to write a symposium on a topic of my choice. I thought this would be a great chance to research how animals move. So the title is Animal Locomotion in Animation. So for my research project I intend to look in to how animals move and apply that to a form of animation. I am going to lean towards quadrupeds over anything else, but if some nice information comes up I'll be sure to make note of it.

Some brief research I am looking in to is:

• Edweard Muybridge, who is regarded as one of the fathers of the motion picture
• The Animators Survival Kit by Richard Williams, animation director for Who Framed Roger Rabbit
• Cartoon Animation by Preston Blair

The Beginning

So hello. My name is Gavin Flood and welcome to my blog, and hopefully a journey in to the development of our game Haven. I am currently a student attending Dundalk Institute of Technology in Ireland. The course I am studying is Computing in Games Development. I am in my final year and it is coming to an end. That's enough about me for now, let me tell you about my project. I said my project, but I really should have said our project. Our final year project is a group project. Our task? To create a game with well being enhancing technology in mind. So out of our design phase came Haven.

So what really is Haven? Haven is an adventure game for the PC that aims to help in gauging empathetic responses in children aged eight to 12. the child will explore, interact and engage with the world and its inhabitants in a safe, relaxing environment that is conducive to learning social skills that many of us take for granted. Essential social skills are taught effectively through the player interacting with in-game characters.

The Haven Logo

Haven is set on a beautiful island that is populated by fantastical creatures. The game world is comprised of beautiful sandy beaches and lush vegetation. A dynamic day/night cycle keeps the world rich in colors and visual effects. These colors are geared to create a calm and relaxing atmosphere. Haven is brought tot life by an array of mysterious creatures. These creatures, although alien in nature, are inspired by real life to keep a sense of familiarity.

Early concept of Haven during the day

Currently we are only in a proof of concept stage. What this means is that we have proven that our game is possible and that we are able to do it. There is still a lot to come. We are aiming for alpha in the next couple of weeks, and then finally beta.