Week 2 - Self Study

A very rough walk/run animation. How did I create this? With great difficulty...

In order to allow for my character to have animations, I first needed to "rig" the model. This is a process where an armature is used to define the "bones" of the model, which defines how the model can move. Essentially, I have to create a skeleton structure to give the model an idea as to where the various joints and rigid bones are - allowing me to pose the model easily.

Now with the model adequately rigged, I started to animate my model using "keyframes". These can be thought of as snapshots in time, with the model posed in a particular way at each point. Keyframes are placed along a timeline similar to ones associated with video playback (think of the bar along the bottom of YouTube videos), then as time passes, the bones of the model move, rotate and scale as needed in order to match the next keyframe in the sequence. This process allows the computer to do most of the heavy lifting, as I only need to specify a handful of frames while it fills in the rest!

An idle animation. One hand on his hip, the other scratching his head.

Lastly, a waving animation. He seems friendly - but don't be fooled, he wants to eat your soul.