(10/03/2023-15/03/2023) - RIGS AND MAGNETS EXPERIMENT

So for what I had to do for this week was to experiment with rigs and magnets. So, at first, I wanted to experiment with what I was most familiar with using; rigs.

So for this experiment, I decided to focus on three emotions:

• Evil

• Scared

• Annoyed

EVIL EMOTION EXPERIMENT

The first emotion that I will be discussing about for this experiment is evil. For this experiment, I chose to mainly use rigs. So, when filming I decided to not use magnets to see if there was a difference in quality for my work.

So this was the first experiment that I got to to do. I realized that the black backdrop does not suit the armature, since it is just the proper skeleton of the armature instead of the original armature I was going to use.

So, for the backdrop I decide that using a green screen would be better since I will be able to edit the colour of the background during the Adobe post-production in Adobe after effects or premiere pro.

So what do I like about it?

• I really liked experimenting with the shakiness of the hand in the animation. During it I was trying to play with holding frames as well as one to one frames. I noticed that a mix of both helps a lot with the fluidity of the animation

• The lighting is really good and the animation is taken in really good quality, I really tried to focus on the quality of the camera. The lighting helps capture the intensity of the shot that I am trying to make.

Issues with the animation?

• The shakiness of the hand is too much, so I will have to play around with the frames a lot more and try to reduce the attention on the hand shaking

• I noticed the armature sometimes slides, as the movement is happening, so I decided that having magnets on the ground will help a lot in keeping the armature still and sturdy.

Here is a time-lapse of me animating this piece with the reference on the side, showing my workspace of Dragon Frame. I started to use my footage more as a reference since rotoscoping (as mentioned in my previous experiment) was not effective. Again, the armature figure as well as my figure in the footage is a lot different, so it was extremely difficult to try to experiment with the pose.

SCARED EMOTION EXPERIMENT

The second emotion that I decided to experiment with is 'fear.' For this experiment, I decided to fully use magnets. I noticed that I was unable to fully complete this experiment since the armature was not balancing properly with the magnets. The green back drop suited the armature a lot better since the head and limbs were standing out a lot more. As well as, I will be able to edit this during post-production.

Here is the final product of the magnet experiment. It wasn't much but it was incredibly difficult to deal with since the armature kept swaying everywhere and would constantly keep falling down. It was pretty hard to deal with considering I was trying to put magnets under both feet but it was still struggling to stand upright once one magnet was moved.

Here is the time-lapse of animation. In the time-lapse I realised I was too focused in trying to keep the armature in the same position with the movement rather than animating the armature itself. So, trying to animate with magnets only was extremely time consuming and I don't think I would use only magnets. I think I would use magnets with the rig as a way to hold the armature down.

Advantages of Experiment with Magnets

• I would not need to composite out a rig during the video editing stage if I used magnets.

Disadvantages of Magnets

• Would've been ideal if this animation was finished but it was way too time consuming and I was unable to film 1 second of it.

• The backdrop would move around during filming which is an issue since it makes it harder to edit in post-production.

• Spent too much time trying to get the armature back into position rather than animating.

ANNOYED EMOTION EXPERIMENT

The last emotion that I decided to experiment with is 'annoy'. For this experiment, I chose to use both rigs and magnets.

Here is the final animation I got to create and I noticed after exporting that the legs were cut out. I realized that the borders were not on showing the aspect ratio of the animation in my workspace on Dragon Frame after filming. So, I was really bothered by it.

Here is my workspace in dragon frame. I decided to take a screen recording of the animation on what it could've looked like if the feet were not cut out in the final product. You can see how I forgot to edit the opacity of the borders to show the aspect ratio of the final product.

What I like about it?

• Out of all the experiments, I think this is the smoothest and most effective one. I feel as though I was playing around with framing a lot to try to capture what I wanted to capture.

• I feel as though I was able to play with framing a lot more and tried to add a lot of weight, especially as the leg goes to hit the ground.

• I also chose to put magnets under one of the legs since I was aware that one of the legs doesn't move that often. I also did this so the other leg would have the ability to do the movement that it needed to do.

Improvements?

• I think I can try to put more emphasis on weight for the final version of the animation, especially as the leg hits the ground or as the upper body bounces in the beginning.

Conclusion

I think this experiment was extremely effective, since I got to see what worked and what didn't work for me. I found out that I preferred to use the rigs more rather than using magnets, since the armature is helped by the rig to stand upright.

As mentioned previously, the magnet experiment was extremely frustrating since I focused more of my time in trying to get the armature to stand up rather than focus on the animation itself, hence it falling constantly and moving sideways a lot. The only reason why I would use magnets would be to hold the armature down in place as the rigs allows the armature to stand.