Animation Round up. Concluding the year 2014.

Hello People and welcome to your favorite animation blog Hypefroactive. I hope you've enjoyed the holidays so far and if you are still working, dont worry, there's still plenty of time to catch up with the fun and excitement in the air.

Alright today i'll be talking a little bit about animating in general from my point of view as regards learning as a newbie from scratch. As you know i've been creating animation demos from around say March/April up till about December with focus on "how to animate" and has been a very wonderful experience. Starting with the stick figures here http://youtu.be/sBAKHD4ZKC0 and a couple of videos in-between taking you to http://youtu.be/Z-vY3sZ5hlM if you are a soccer fan, then a couple others more until this final one is produced http://youtu.be/sgnhTnzCnHE which is a dance.

Yeah talking about the last one, i've always wanted to do some dance moves but find it difficult to pull off. This is not because i dont know the moves, this is because i do not know what to do first, next and how to go about it. Faced with this type of problems with time always running against you, the only logical solution at the time would be to do something else, sort of like change course and this can really be embarrassing sometimes not been able to do exactly what you want to do. Well in this last reel http://youtu.be/sgnhTnzCnHE, i was able to do exactly what i wanted to and would have loved to do more but for time. Also, i noticed that though there are a lot of ways to animate, there is a right way which of course is in alliance with the "principles of animation". If these principles are understood while working with a keen eye and patience, you can bring almost anything to life.

Well, my last demo about sums it up for learning how to animate as a newbie in simple terms and form,  since i rarely look into lighting and the scenes. Next year, i'll be upgrading to my Reid V2.0 which is basically stepping up on my animations in general. So i hope to see you all in 2015 and until then keep animating, keep the spirit alive.

My November "Dance Reel"

Hello Peeps and welcome to another edition of Animations on your favorite HypefroActive Blog. I trust you've been doing good and Breaking new grounds as you aspire to. Animating is the name and Animation is the game and you know how we do talking about clicking that mouse to make things happen. Ok, so it's the last month of the year and i owe you guys a dance anime as promised since last month. Well, rendering is in progress and will be over by tomorrow and would definitely be on air tomorrow God sparing our lives....

That was yesterday. I intended to post that and maybe what i'm posting now, today, including but not limited to the video as promised over a month ago but i thought it best to delay it until today as everyone would be eager to see the shot that i've been talking about plus this is beginning to get really boring or don't you think? Again i apologize fro not able to pull off the fight animation that was to come after this as i have alot to deal with including time constraint. Please bear with me, i'll try and make it up to you sometime next year.

And in Next year i'll b upgrading to my version 2.0, so watch out as i bring better and more quality fun than i have this year. So with no further ado, please watch, share and subscribe to my channel.

Once again, thanks alot and see you next week.

 http://youtu.be/sgnhTnzCnHE

Synergy and 3D in Africa.

Hello Peeps  and welcome to another edition of Animations on HypefroActive. I trust you are all doing good as usual and as i'll like to think and believe. It's been a while again and as you know i am working on my dance Animation. I've not abandoned it just so you know because some of us may be thinking, hey this guy dont take this long to churn stuff out, so what's the problem or has he called it quit? Eeerrr no, matter of facte i'm on it as we speak and almost done then afterwards maybe render. But it definitely will be out next week. And about the fight Animation, i'm sorry but that would have to wait till next year. Yep, alot of us really would want to see that and i particularly would want to do something crazy as well with the models but i guess that wont be possible this year because i'ld be going on vacation, so please bear with me. C'mon, it's Christmas baby!

Alright, today i'll be looking at the word Synergy. What does it mean? A lot of people use that word and nothing happens afterwards. Well to begin with, i'll go with Synergy is "the interaction of elements that when combined produce a total effect that is greater than the sum of the individual elements, contributions, etc". This definition is culled from dictionary.com and if it's what alot of the guys here mean then we are good to go with reasoning together so you can go on reading, but if not then don't bother as it will appear that we are on different pages from start.

Now people urge others to Synergize, which is an awesome idea but what are we synergizing? I think to put it in simple terms, it means bringing different useful things to the table to achieve one great effect. Up till this day, i've not seen anything like it even as awesome as this idea may seem and people clamour for it at every given opportunity to use it. Like i said it's a very good thing and if you don't believe me, then you should try modelling from scratch, texturing, rigging and behaving like crazy all in the name of animating. Do that a couple of times say three or four then you'd get the drift. I animate and create everything from scratch because that way, i learn and it gradually accepts me ultimately becoming a part of me, also it helps me build my speed. But that doesn't mean i like it. For me, i do it because i have to especially when you take into account the society we are in and the missing infrastructures needed to help harness that creative mind. Well the bad news is The government doesn't seem to care much about me and you or youth development so lets talk Synergy for real, maybe this would work.

Some of us 3D artist model very well, others texture and the rest probably rig and animate. As it stands, a lot of us know how to model and texture whether professionally,amateur-ly, slightly, roughly or any ly that you'd want to put it. But the same cannot be said about animating as some of us are just too far away from others. What i'm trying to say here is, there are more modellers than animators. If you were to do a ten minute shot and you are thinking of raising a team to pull it off, this may not work as you are about to find out that a particular specie lacks in your team. And even if you manage to bring them together in the small amounts of what everyone knows or can contribute, you'll find out that some of these guys don't understand the language of these other guys not because the Softwares are different, not because they are far from each other but because they understand the fundamentals that link them up in different ways and levels. For instance, a lot of us still struggle with walk circles while some others actually bring a variety of thought actions into life. The ways may not be a problem but the level is and will always be. Faced with small problems like these... Synergy may not work.

Synergy can only work where there is division of labour and everyone to a large extent can work with very little supervision or non at all. And like i said, when it comes to ways, that part of the problem can be tackled as we see things differently but when it comes to Levels then that's a different ball game. So you see, the synergy thing would seem to apply in different respects considering the little things said here plus a lot more. And in the end it all boils down to how good you are for someone to want to collaborate with you. This last piece is the ugliest nobody wants to tell you to your face because they want to probably stay in your good books.

Well this post applies alot to guys from Africa having problems like electricity, the internet data plans and stuffs that will aid them in becoming better animators. Well, that's it for today and i hope to see you again some time soon so until then stay blessed, stay out of trouble and keep animating.

Smoothing out Animations with the curve editor

Hello Guys and welcome to another edition of Animations on HypefroActive. Still on my Dance Animation shot and i want to share some tips used in achieving as well as polishing my it and today i'll be talking about the CURVE EDITOR. But before then please allow me to share a WIP of the shot. At this time there are no cameras and the shot is been culled from the perspective view and can be found by clicking right here http://youtu.be/SknUJPn6PaQ

That's right, today i'll be talking about the Curve Editor in 3dsMax. Where is the Curve Editor located and what is it? The curve editor is located on the standard tools bar, normally the third menu bar counting from the software windows title bar and is between the graphite and schematic view tool tabs. So it's like this, let's say you locate the group of snap tools, the ones looking like "red horse shoe magnets, then immediately after this group you've got the selection sets which is normally a blank space then the mirror and align tools, the layer, graphite and finally the graph editor. Yeah that is where the graph editor is located.

Now alot of the time you probably would have come across the graph editor and maybe think, yeah it's just one of those tools you can do without. Nope it's far from one of those tools you want to ignore. Truth is the graph editor helps you smoothen out motion paths and if the graph editor cant handle it, then nothing else in 3dsMax can or it's equivalent in any software. The graph editor is where the finishing touches to your animations are applied. It's the last resort and i pretty much regard it as my saloon or make up shop because that's what it does. It applies make ups to your animations. Over are some pictures of some shots that i took while animating and i want you to look at the neck area of the character. The Character is on a dance pose kind of what we call "komole" in Nigeria naturally occurring in a song's breakdown. Anyways the neck is over turned in the y-axis and that is not what i want. A lot of Animators would say push your character animations to the extreme

so that you get alot of change. Which is true especially for cartoon animations but in this case i wish to achieve otherwise. Though i could do that by going to every frame where i have those rotations and adjust them but because i have many of them i choose to work with the curve editor because it is faster, more interactive and i can easily foretell what it is i want and in what direction it should go. Not to talk about the advantages of smoothing out curves, making them linear, constraining a shape or bone to a point in time thereby eliminating the effect of sliding etc. So the second picture shows the problem, while the third picture shows the solution using the curve editor. The curve editor is a very powerful tool in any 3d animation software and if you really want to be good at animating then you should learn to use it effectively. Make it your friend.

That's all about the curve editor's role in my dance shot and i hope to see you guys soonest. So until then keep the dream alive and keep animating.

"Animators Block" on My Dance shot?

Hello Peeps and welcome to another exciting edition of Animations on HypefroActive. Still on my recent shot talking about the Dance Anime i embarked on some days ago. Wow it's gradually becoming weeks now and i'm still not through with the shot. I guess it happens sometimes and i think i've got the Animators block. Reason been i'm trying not to repeat anything that i've done before talking about in this one http://youtu.be/opFjvErscKw.And to make it worse, i'm not much of a dancer myself so you can see where i'm coming from. But in all i've got some major moves and i intend adding more dance moves to what i already have, even a Micheal Jackson "Billie Jean" signature move but on second thoughts, having an M.J dance feature in a song that's not MJ doesn't really feels right and i wouldn't want to disrespect The Late King of Pop like that. So let's look for something else then.

Alright so i'm on about nine hundred frames of dance animation and i've got the Animation block. But that's not much of a problem because this things happen sometimes plus they come and go. But what is more important having come this far is the option of having to rig the hands without any ik solvers. Just bones and controls and the hands swinging freely. Boy! That would have been something. But i've gone beyond that now and the show must go on.

So as i like to animate most of the time, i've got the character swinging kind of into the scene then positions himself for a variety of wacky dance moves. So far everything has turned out well but i'm hoping to improve on it, introduce a couple more dance moves, do the tweenings and pass it to you guys.