This is my draft mockup of the sneeze so far. I can see that I still need to work on the beinging of the scene, where a sneeze is felt but then passes.
Once I’m happy with that, I need to start pacing the animation out. Working out the timing of the hand rubbing scene especially- as the movement needs a little help in coming across. Also the ins and outs of the arching back, making sure there is a clear acceleration of the actual sneeze. I want the sneeze in some ways to sneak up on the character and be released quickly.
I went through the same process as I did with the bowling ball. I made a reference footage of a table tennis ball being dropped from a height of 1 meter. Then went through the process of blocking out the key frames in Maya.
I recorded the dropping of a bowling ball from the height of 1 meter onto a plank of wood (this was to represent the floor of a bowling alley)
Using the footage above as reference when animating in Maya.
Started with a blocking out of the key movements of the bowling ball. Leaving the ball rotation for later.
I then used the Graph Editor to work out the momentum of the ball, as it accelerates down and decelerates slowly throughout the sequence to a stop. Working out the timings of the arcs was a tricky in places of high speed, as it was coming across a bit jumpy. So for the purpose of having the movement clear for the viewers to register I smoothed out the pacing. Even though it was now not following the speed of the reference footage.
Satisfied with the movement of the ball bounce so far, I then went into blocking out the rotations. Considering the weight of the object and the speed it is traveling, I worked out that there would be a limited amount of rotation occurring. After this I went back into the Graph Editor, this time adjusting the rotations, to help give the sense of the ball rolling rather that gliding across the screen.
Tasked to animate a hammer taking 3 hits to get a nail into a plank of wood.
Used the tools we learnt previously to rotate the hammer in a swinging motion, with the use of key frames (S) to save the key moments in the action. We started off just blocking out the moves, and later learned how to use the animation graph editor, to play with the momentum and timing of the motion, to help give a more realistic weight to the action.
Experimenting with adjusting the vertex of the nail head. To show the hammer damaging the nail in the process of hammering it down into the wood.
dsbeckywebb 