Video Game Animation

I'm running my video game animation class again - 4 weeks, tons of fun! Hope to see you there. Click the image to check it out.

"Even Strain" Process

Even Strain Animation Process from Kyle Kenworthy on Vimeo.

"Believe In Yourself" Process

Hysterical Blindness Process

Process video for personal test I did

Hysterical Blindness Process from Kyle Kenworthy on Vimeo.

Ballet Animation Process

Here's a process video for the ballet shot I did. Once I got the blocking done I focused on polishing sections at a time, starting with just the root/legs and working my way up. I found this very helpful as it kept me from being too overwhelmed and was able to focus all my attention on certain areas.

Anim: Cops & Robbers - Process

Here's a process video of my 11 Second Entry & some explanation below
 

 The first clip is my reference. I plan out my camera angle & layout in Maya first, so I can shoot reference that will be close to the angle I'll see in Maya.

12 sec - The next step is blocking. For dialog shots I worked in stepped & block in the major key poses. I study my reference and also use it for very rough timing. This just helps save time, so when I start splinning in the next step the timing isn't super off.

23 sec - The next video I have splinned the beginning. I work in small sections, so I can focus my attention. I don't stay in stepped mode that long, I find it easier to switch to spline & start adding in-betweens there.

35 sec - The fourth video I now have rough inbetweens/clean up on the whole shot. This is technically my final blocking pass.

46 sec - this is my first pass polish. I start tweaking some of the timing, pushing some of the poses & adding more overlap/follow through. I also added the gun twirl in this stage, I felt the ending was lacking a bit and thought this would spice it up

57 sec - this is my second polish pass. I've added in first pass lip sync/worked on the face more. I've also added in some secondary action on the gun, but only in the first half of the shot

1:09 - this is the final polish pass on the guy. I've tweaked more lip sync and fixed anything I saw that felt "off"

1:20 - I added in the girl animation. I animated her in a more straight ahead manner, was in spline from the beginning. I knew I didn't want her to be distracting so I basically just animated reactions to what the guy was doing

1:32 - Final version. Added in a background & rendered it using Maya's Hardware Render Buffer. I definitely recommend it. It's quick and lets you add in motion blur. Basically a beefed up version of a playblast

Mans Best Friend - Process

Here's a process vid for my 11 second entry last month. Now you can see me crawling around my apartment like a fool :P

11 Second Club Progression

Here's a progression reel for my 11 Second Club entry

Anim: Oka Free Running

Here's an animation I did for work. Took about 6 work days to complete and another 3 or 4 days of planning before I started. I also included a progression reel. Definitely things I could fix, but for the length of the shot and the amount of time I had, I'm happy with the result. Model by John DeRiggi, Rig by Brian Evans, Environment by Kwame Babb & Justin DeVore, Character Concept by Ben Chaney

Battleball Process

I decided to talk a little about the process I used when animating on Battle Ball. The thing that made this project interesting was how fast I had to animate. As I mentioned in the reel I posted, most shots were completed in 5-12 hrs...so basically a day for each shot. Here's a hopefully in depth look at how I animated a shot for this project. I've broken it down into steps with videos for each one. This shot took me about 10 hrs to complete.

The first thing I did when starting on this project was research. After coming to the conclusion that my bball skills aren't quite amazing... I decided not to shoot reference of myself and instead search for videos of people who are far more talented than me. I spent a long time basically just looking for videos of stuff that was cool, it was a blast. Later I started combing this videos and making notes...use this dribble, then that dunk...and that celebreation, etc etc. For this animation I combined 2 reference videos..a dribble and a dunk. I mainly just used them as rough reference, as this dunk is one that a human couldn't do in real life and I ended up changing lots of things in the dribble too. I like how in a lot of street ball players would bounce the ball off their opponents face...so I also decided to add that in...but in a more extreme way haha. Here's a clip of the combined reference



I actually animated the dribble in the beginning in a previous shot, lots of the moves in our game share dribbles (as they were the most complex to animate) so I won't go through the step by step of how I animated that...but here it is.



The 1st thing I usually did when approaching these dunks was a real quick pass on the timing of the jump. This helps get a sense of how much hang time there will be. I only animate the root of the character and basically treat him like a bouncing ball.



After I get a rough feel of the timing I switch to stepped mode and start blocking in my keys. I break up the animation in 2 parts - The Jump & The Hanging on the rim. I tend to break up my animations into chunks like this and work on them in sections, it helps me not feel as overwhelmed...especially on long shots. So this is rough blocking for the 1st part of the shot



After I finish blocking on the 1st part, I move on to the second. I now have the whole shot blocked in.



After I get the whole shot blocked I spend a bit of time adding more inbetweens and refining the timing. I try and make sure I have enough here that when I finally spline it I hopefully don't have a lot of clean up to do (which helps save time). The more keys you add in in this phase, the less inbetweening the computer will do...which is good cause they can be dumb :P For adding inbetweens I use the tweenMachine plug in..I find it super useful.



Then I hit the spline button and cross my fingers. This is what the whole shot looks like right after I splinned everything....not too good...but not too bad. The legs and arms are doing all sorts of wonky things (since I'm doing a lot of ik/fk switching) but all in all not too bad. In this step, if things look too broken..or parts of the animation don't quite work/make sense, I go back to stepped and add more inbetweens/rework things, then spline again. In this shot I didn't have to do that.



I now start to polish the shot up. I read a tip by Shawn Kelly where he mentioned he hides the legs when cleaning things up and I've found that to be really helpful when animating more physical shots like this. I again am only working on the 1st half of the shot. I start with cleaning up the root and then work my way up the body. In some of the shots I'd even turn off the arms...but I didn't do that here.



After I'm semi satisfied with the 1st half of the shot I start looking at the last half...following the same plan as before....starting with the root and working my way up through the body. I've also added a little celebration bit to the end of the shot.



Now that I've got the upperbody feeling pretty well. I go back and repeat the process for the legs. It's now much easy to clean them up with the root/upper body more of less finished...I just go through and make sure the footfalls are in the right place and add overlap/drag for when he's in the air. As I've been doing throughout I start with just the 1st half of the shot.



Once the 1st half is cleaned up...I move on to cleaning up the legs in the last half



This is the final shot. I've went back and made sure everything hooks up well with the dribble I'm using and I added the reaction to the second character. There are definitely things I would want to fix, but lots of times when animating on games or in short timelines its about finding a balance of quantity & quality. This process helped me to animate quickly, but also end up with a result that I was satisfied with considering the time constraints. You can see my reel of Battleball animations HERE

Transformers Fun Process

calling this one done...here's a process video. I uses a more layered approached for this animation

11 Sec Entry & Process

Here's my final entry...ended up getting 4th place. And a process video

11 Second Club Process

Here's a process video for my 11 sec club entry