MechArm Animation

MechArm Animation 

This mecharm is create through the used of Maya tutorial. This tutorial brought me through the understanding of IK and creating a function of skeleton for my mecharm. This will help me to animate my mecharm easily. The tutorial also taught me that to make joint and compressing the hierarchy. This will allows my item to inherit the action of the "parent". This will make animation easier. 

Click the link to view the Mech Arm in action :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8BJc5LWvPE&feature=youtu.be

Exercise 4 

1)  Apart from their different sizes, it is obvious from Luxo Jr. that the big lamp is “older” and that the small lamp is “younger”

How is this communicated by the animation? Give at least THREE examples.

 Answer : 

 1. Through animation, the smaller lamp is hopping and jumping around , this make the smaller lamp look more cheerful than the bigger lamp.  In reality it will be logical that younger people such as kids will be more cheerful compared to the older one. Therefore, this is reflected in the animation. 

2. The when the smaller lamp rolls the ball to the bigger lamp, the bigger lamp had an action of moving back. This sows that the bigger ball does not have any interest in the ball and find it annoying. This will show the bigger lamp is more calm. 

3.  When the ball bursted, the bigger lamp does not look as disappointed as the smaller lamp does. Also the smaller lamp will chase after the ball when it is rolling.This shows that the larger lamp keeps its feeling better to itself then the smaller lamp who shows its feeling straight away . 

       

 2)  Give an example from Luxo Jr of how timing is used for comic effect. Explain how the timing decisions contribute to the humour.

Through this animation video, I had learnt that the timing is important because it uses the exasperating principle to show how a ball is being bounced. If the timing were not used properly, The effect of the smaller lamp jumping and hoping around will not be as effective as it should be like now. The principle of   

squash and stretch is used in the animation of the lamp jumping. 

3)   When you create a joint chain, these form a hierarchy, with the first joint at the top and the last joint at the bottom. Explain why this is necessary for the joints to work properly.

This is necessary as Joint 1 - joint 4 is connected in a way that joint 1 is at the swivel base and joint 4 is at the connector. When joint 1 is at the top of the hierarchy, it means that whatever is after the joint will be a child of it. Therefore when  joint 1 moves, the rest of the other 3 joints will move naturally. This is the follow through and and overlapping action principle of animation