Learning Animations: Newbies Minimum Requirements.

Hello guys and welcome to the Animation blog HypefroActive. Yeah, i know its indeed been another long while and this one looks more like an AWOL kind of long while and as usual again, i apologise for leaving you guys hanging. I'm still into 3D even more than i've ever been and i've been busier than ever and still am. But this time, i wont be leaving you guys without sharing a post and in the nearest future, i hope to be more stable here. Today i‘ll b talking on the above so that newbies with the desire to learn animation can take a cue & make life a bit easier for themselves. These were things i didn't know but dived into anyways because of my passion for the art. Well, i am here and i hope you "the new" guys don't make the same mistakes.

1) Passion n Patience: These P-squares r not your average dancing twins, neither is any of em an Ozokwor. Yet, u‘ll need them like crap. U must b passionate enough to push on & through during very tough times n b patient enough to wait for gradual results without been stupid about it. Both ingredients must be in the right proportions n mix. So if u don't have these two, go out and borrow, steal or buy because you‘ll need them. Afterall, what is learning without patience and passion?

2) Ying n Yang: See this as a calabar/chinese word and you may not b wrong. Its infact chinese and means Balance. Hot and cold, Hard n soft that is, anything with DIRECT opposites. Taking on animations in this part of the globe means you are crazy enough to do anything because the challenges that follow are quite overwhelming. So in that same state of insanity, you‘ll have to look for a way of been sane. The key is to always b happy, so whatever it is you need to do to keep yourself in that state of suspension, please do as long as you are not hurting or bothering anyone with it.

3) Electricity & Finance: Finance would b needed for maintenance and running costs attributed to you and staying on course. Including and not limited to buying softwares and how-to dvds plus google and YouTube. Add any other to the basket but these cannot be compromised.
On Electricity, that's a major problem here in Nigeria where i come from and pretty much Africa generally. Someway and somehow, something needs to power up your computer. If you fix that, then you could well be on your way towards learning and getting good.

4) Computer: As  far as this goes, the laptop or any other computer device that can store at least 3hrs of light while modelling after your generator or electricity goes off is what i recommend. RAM should at least be 4gig, a minimum of 500gig HDD, GPU is optional but wold be good if you have access to one,  a backup Hdd would also b nice if you can afford one and if not, that shouldn't stop you either. And you can check on google or other pros for their expert advice if you want to go higher or want to be more precise on specifications.

5) Softwares: This one is tricky and i wouldn't want to cause any e-war because of it so here goes. It is true that the artist makes the software n not the other way around. This means, regardless of your choice  of software, what comes out of your head and how creative you are is what would matter. This does not mean that they are all on same level because even d pros agree that there are industry standards. Industry standards don't mean others are not good. Its just that these are regarded as the benchmarks. Now while still on this, we should also consider “time“. This sub factor is one thing nobody has or can control & as such manually trying out all d softwares in a bid to pick one, like some artist would recommend should b avoided like AIDS. Truthfully, beginning to know a software wont happen until about 6mths to a year. And we have more than 10softwares doing 3d. Now how long do you think  it will take to go round all of them? A month or two is certainly not enough to study one software, so testing out all of them wont work. Now, how do you solve this mystery? Visit Pro Cgi forums and hear what pros have to say about them. Use google and go dirty. Search for “software vs“ threads, what your focus is in 3D for example visualizations, modelling etc. Yeah, also check out the help forums and fan base as these tells how popular the program is. The more popular it is, the easier you are likely to find learning it.

Modelling a Head (Pt2). Adding Morph Targets.

Completed Low Poly Head Model.

Hello guys and welcome to another edition of Animations on HypefroActive. Today's episode is going to continue from where i left off last week about modelling a a character head and now creating some morph targets then body then back to morph targets. But i'll be talking on the morph targets today, so let's go.
Before we start, i'ld like to post an update on the head i choose to work with and what i did with the eyes. Animations generally are just simulations of real life actions of humans, animals, plants, machines etc and the same applies to modelling. So in my case, looking at the eyes of the character from the previous post, i think the eyes as at now looks more organic, appealing and human a lot more than the other that looks a bit mechanical or unnatural if you like. And though it's nice to be creative with your work and all that but sometimes it's best to stay with key features of a subject. That way you keep things simple, less exaggerated and you have a sense of what you want to achieve whether or not you have a reference, otherwise you could go on and on for days modelling and continually making modifications to the model. So on mine, i've decided to stick with this character head.

Now after creating the head and are satisfied with it, the next thing should be the morph targets. At this point, you cant make direct modifications to the head anymore because it would affect the morph targets. In other words, you can begin creating morph targets when you are satisfied with the head if you get what i mean. And while some of them are basics, there are others that would depend on what

Adding Morph Targets.

you hope to sell as a story. For instance, morphs of the eyelids closing, eye brows moving up or down and the eyelids opening are all basic morph targets that our models have to have, and these are simple actions our head does almost every time. Any other cool or exaggerated stuff you hope to throw in there, you'll have to model. For me, so far i have about ten models and will be adding another ten or thereabout for lip syncing and other actions. But right now, i'll be working on the body and i wont be posting that as an episode when i'm done because the workflow is about the same with modelling the head, except that you approach that a bit differently but in all, it's much easier that the head.
So that's that for the day and until we meet again, it's bye and keep animating.

Modelling a Character Head. (In 3ds Max)

Hello guys and welcome to another Edition of Animations on HypefroActive. Ok, I really am excited to be with you today after an AWOL. And because we like to serve fresh Animation topics and tips every time we hit the web, a bit more research has been done into the world of Animations by yours truly and this time it’s the modelling arm. Well, nothing too flashy again, but a little bit more complex and appealing than what I used to do. So without much ado, lets go.

For some time I’ve been doing some drawing on low key for the sake of character design because I think that’s one of the things I’ld like to develop in my animation work. It wasn’t all that difficult because I did plenty of drawing as a kid. I spent time then drawing comic characters like “Captain America, The Hulk, Thor, Spider Man etc”. So coming back later in life to draw straight manga, Disney or pixar characters wasn’t that much of a problem. I've also come to learn that drawing on its own is wide and goes beyond one or two weeks of trainning if you really want to be very good at it. Anyways, the little I picked up was enough to get me on my way. So I fired up 3dsmax and started thus…

Creating a Box of about 40 by 20 by 20, I made sure it was centered on all the axis by zeroing out the x,y and z axis. Converted into an editable poly then went to the object properties by right clicking to turn on see through and backface cull. These two makes it some how transparent so that I can at least see through the reference I would be using to model it. Ok, so that’s done and it’s time to bring in the reference, but before then it's good advice to delete half of the box and add a symetry modifier to

Googled image used as reference

mirror the other side. Now, there’s a bit of problem with bringing in the reference because I didn’t really want to model any of what I drew, so I googled up some images and got an extra from a the movie rio and at the end I had about three of them I’ld want to work with but didn’t want it to look exactly like any of them. Anyways I went ahead and brought one into Max and began working with that.

First thing I did was to create the facial divisions on the box so that it looks like a face, taking into account the levels of the eyes, nose, chin, and head.  Then the box is shaped into the head reference. At this time the head should be divided into three sections. The first covers the fore head, next is the eyes and nose then the mouth   lines and connecting them somewhere at the bridge of the nose near the eyes with an horizontal line, the journey begins. I worked mainly on the edge and vertex sub object levels

Vertical lines carving out the nose

here, either connecting lines together in the edge mode or using cut in the vertex mode to draw lines between vertices. Looking at my reference with a little imagination based on previous modeling experience, I shaped the nose into what you see in the pix. One of the references has that and I liked the idea of the long pointed nose. But I didn’t want the eyes on the level the ones in the ref were so I brought mine down. I probably didn’t need any drawing to tell me that as I already know what I wanted it to look like and drawing it out would have been perfect but it would further take my time.

sculpting the nose and carving out the mouth

I always start with the nose. Drawing two vertical lines and crossing them with an horizontal at the ridge. Then i continue by bringing the tip out while the second line stays connected to the face and i work my way through buy cutting and and connecting edges until i get the desired results.

making mouth divisions

Anyways, the next thing I did was to sculpt the mouth. I began by drawing perpendicular lines to divide that region into four sections. Then connected them again until I got a rhombus (a slant-like rectangle) which I later inset, cut more edges to form the lips and continuing using these combos until the mouth formed. The Eye is the trickiest part because you have to take the eye sockets into consideration and blend the curves obtained to the ones gotten from the bridge of the nose. So you begin by creating a deep well-like eye socket that will contrast the soon to emerge eyeballs. And you this by going to the vertex mode, right clicking and using the cut commands to cut a six or so polygon representing the eye socket. This can be refined later to include more sides and

working on the eyes

make it into something looking more like a circle. A tip, in 3dsmax, most major tools used in modeling are found on the control panel that by default docks on the right of the interface. They are also available for use by right-clicking an the modelled object. In this section, re-distribution of edges and inseting of polygons will be what you’ll need to do here mostly. Then you could also use the cut tool to add necessary edges that would improve the topography of the model. You have to be focused and patient while doing this and employ whatever skill that you can to achieve what you have in mind because one or two wrongly placed edges or vertices could change the appearance of what you have in mind.

refining the head model

Continue refining until you are satisfied with what you have on your screen. Afterwards, you’ll have to focus on the face in general. This section would cover the edges that cut across the sides of the face to the bridge of the nose. See this as horizontal cuts and the ones to cross them will be the vertical ones, coming from the vertices of the eye sockets down to the lines of the mouth created earlier. Another tip is that you try as much as possible to keep all the polygons four sided and that is the maximum. Being mindful of the number of sides your polygons actually have which in this case, four, is good practice. Now it’s possible to have three especially at the edges and in some cases like when you are trying to take down the poly count of an object but these cases are when it’s absolutely necessary and other than that, four should adopted as correct practice and this keeps things really simple and uniform for you. Then another thing to watch out for is loose vertices. These happens majorly when you are in the vertex mode and you use the cut tool. Things like this can pose a problem while skinning and animating the character.

variants of the head model

These are the key features of the head. In refining the fore head, just adopt the same procedure for the cheeks and you’ll be fine. And that goes for the rest of the untouched parts of the head. It sounds easy when I write this here but would help if you have been practicing before now on how to model characters  or at least have the patience and determination  to get better at modeling. Anyways from
here I could go on to bring out variants of this head model and can use them as I deem fit. It’s just a matter of re-distributing the edge flows and behold the variants. So that’s that about modeling of my new character’s head. And until we meet again, keep animating.

What is rigging, how does it work?

Hello Guys and welcome to another edition of Animations on HypefroActive. On the last post i hinted that i'll be doing something a little different from what i've been doing but quite unfortunately, i wont be doing that today. Anyways, i'll be giving a quick tip to rigging. At least on how i do mine. So lets do this.

What is a rig or what does rigging in animations mean?
A rig is the structural part of an animation and is responsible for passing the animations or simulations onto the mesh or model, so that it appears like the model, mesh or character is moving. In other words, a rig is like what the bones in any animal is and does. So thinking about it, lets take the bones first. the bones are the structural part of all animals. Without the bones to hold people up, we'ld probably collapse or not be able to walk. The bones makes us appear to be filled with strength and look firm. When your head turns, or you pick something up, you do that because you are able to coordinate these movements with your bones. If you had a fractured bone, all these would be painfully difficult to achieve and if yo had none at all, then your guess is as good as mine if you thinking blob. There's a lot of deeper medical explanations to this but let's just stick with this for now. So the same goes for the rig. The rig represents the bones that drives the mesh in the 3D world and without the rig, the mesh or model would be what it is, a model. This means that when you've finished modelling your beautiful character and it's all textured up, you still need to add a rig to it that would drive it's motions. Now if this explanation makes any sense at all then let's proceed to the next paragraph.

Consider rigging a leg 

Now, the leg has about four major bones that enables rotations which are the upper, the lower, the heel and the ball of the foot. A lot of beginner animators miss the one at the ball of the foot so the walk created becomes awkward. But this is not to say that badly animated human characters do not have ball of the foot bones and that's why they are bad. Rather, what i'm saying is that these bones have to be there if you want a smooth, realistic walk or run. With an understanding of how this works then what's left is positioning these bones in the right places. The ankle bone for instance is located on the foot bone in the rig and it's pivot is what makes all the difference. I am saying that if you have an anklet bone, then it's pivot cannot or should not be in the center but should be located somewhere around the ankle as it is in real life. In rigging, the first thing to understand is not the bones but the hierarchy as regards order and relationship. Softwares like 3dsmax and pretty much other 3D softwares have the hierarchy tab which allows you to manipulate the pivot or center of any object and this helps in placing a pivot exactly where you want it to be so that rotations as you've perceived can happen exactly at that point.
So let's assume we understand the usefulness of helper objects, object hierarchies and let's try setting up a simple leg rig. Thesame way these bones are setup is the same way you'll be setting up the ones for you model, regardless of whatever software you use. I use 3dsmax so the procedure is thus,
-) fire up 3dsmax,
-) Go to the command panel, the panel by your right hand of the screen.
-) Click the create tab, then go to the next lines of tabs below it,
-) Go to systems, it's the last button by the right,
-) Click on bones.

Goto the front view and click once to create the upper bone, click again for the lower, the ankle then the toe bone then right click to terminate the command. This finally produces a small bone regarded as the tip bone. So now you have your leg rig. Using the rotation buttons and rotating any single part of the rig will cause it to rotate hence simulate movement. Of course this doesn't look like much right now but this is how it all starts. The leg bone is further driven by ik solvers to make animations a lot easier, with the upper leg bone parented to a helper which in turn is parented to the hip bone. And the additions to making it a complex and more effective rig is endless. But staying and keeping things really simple most of the time is enough to bring the desired results, unless you understand how to really rig by way of adding constraints and writing scripts to make the rig complex but more effective. Now if we are to consider the simple rig above, it's clear where the upper and lower bones will be, but immediately after the lower bone there is the on named tarsal. If i were to create a leg rig, that tarsal would drive the ankle and the next one drives the ball of the foot.

So, this rig integrated into the rest makes up an entire human rig that is animated and makes the mesh simulate it's movements by means of skinning which is the process of attaching the model to the bones.

Some common Stuff we overlook in Animations. Squash and Stetch, timing and spacing.

 Hello People and welcome to another edition of animations on Hypefroactive. Today i'll be talking about some basics that we regard as common but plays a huge role in understanding animations with focus on the bouncing ball. So here we go.

A lot of things make up animations and animations demands alot of things as well. Chief amongst them is the principles and a clear understanding of how they work.  It’s ok to move a ball from point A to point B, but what if you were asked to put a hold on it somewhere in the middle at point C and apply a squash and stretch to it during the whole process. Now, that would appear to be a BIG DEAL and yes you are right it is because you don’t just put the squash and stretch anywhere you like and the ball starts bouncing with the cartoony appeal that squash and stretch brings. Also you have timing and spacing to contend with in the process, then the moving hold and poses. And you can get away with keeping away from exagerations and still come out squeaky clean if you like, as it would not affect the short that much. So what is the point I’m trying to make? I’m saying you don’t need to apply all the principles all the time. It’s like making stew and using the same ingredients in cooking some other kind of soup. That wont work, because the soup would define the ingredients to use. Same thing applies to animation. The principles employed in creating a walk cycle would be different from that needed to create a jump or somebody falling off a cliff or somebody trying to get off a chair and begin a walk. The order to applying them would differ as well. The only thing that any of these would have in common, would be flow. Without flow, the animations wont be appealing as you hope they would turn out to be.

There are a lot of things still murking in the dark waiting to happen to that short you are planning, but wont come out until you get there. So youtube or any other tube wont save you from this one. These are the type of things that you encounter while trying to animate a short that’s not quite coming as you intend or imagined it and after a few hours to some days, you are like “hey, I think I should be doing something better with my life”. But the truth is that you went about it the wrong way and that’s why you were stuck and probably would stay there for a while until you get a proper hang of how to go about this.

What you see in this short is a cartoony bouncing ball https://youtu.be/Lga4M0pD2bs. But it goes beyond that because everything you see there and a little more applies to character animation. If you know how to go about applying this then creating a cartoon shouldn’t be much of a problem. And if you dont not know what I’m talking about up till now, then get a mentor or a school and learn how to animate properly. Opportunities abound in this wonderful profession and the potentials are limitless. Arm yourself properly, be an Animator.

If you've got any problems or would want to be an animator but dont know how, then send me a mail here chimatic@gmail.com.

The Business Side of Animations in Africa.

Hello Guys and welcome to another exciting edition of Animations on HypefroActive. Trust you guys are good and are keeping up with the struggle. Ok, today i wont be talking about any shot that i did and i'm thinking introducing something new from the outside of this blog in the future since it's beginning to look like i'm sounding the same already. Anyways, today i'll be talking about the Business side to Animations.

Animations in Africa still is in it's teething stage trying to crawl because the knowledge is not yet spread even if artists know of the animation principles. One thing is to know about these principles and another is to understand how they are applied. Now Animation is Art and you don't rush Art if you want the best out of it. And that's why you see the Big Studios churning out very beautiful work because Artists working on a project are been divided into groups and assigned different duties with a sense of specialization. And the result is what you see when it's all said and done in a packaged DVD or in the Cinemas as these animated features go beyond boundaries breaking box offices and raking in millions of cash in dollars.

The thing to understand here is not just the fact that it's an Animated feature so it will sell, or that because it was heavily invested in, or created with the computer. This is 2015 and people have seen a lot of animations looking at local TV and Cable channels. They know Tom and Jerry, they've seen Kung fu Panda, Ice age, Toy story etc. And they'll be expecting just about the same or very close quality in Animations when they look at yours. Even if you kill the quality because you are trying to manage quality against production time, these maneuvers will be seen and understood. People will know why you did what and this is quite different from not knowing how to Animate at all. Afterall, you are altimately creating these animations for an audience. Again, take for instance, the Animation series called NARUTO. It's a Japanese cartoon series with a wonderful story line and good enough animations to go with it. They probably would have done better but because it's a series, they have to play down on the quality of animation if the movie has to hit the screens on time.

There is no magic or shortcut to it and until we start seeing things from this perspective, the Animation business will continue to crawl in Nigeria and Africa because nobody wants to buy a product that doesn't have value and that goes to most of our animations. Look at our Music Industry, Nigerian songs are been played in Clubs, in and out of Nigeria. This wasn't happening some ten or twenty years ago but it's possible now because our music artists have bridged that gap. They understand and know what people want and they give it to them. From the lyrics, to production and message, the audience just gulps it in when these songs hits the streets. This is no different from the Animation Industry. Now whether Pixar, Dreamworks, Imagi, Bluesky, Disney etc animates better than us wont really matter. What would matter is that we know how to animate at all. In the real life, asides skill, alot of other things will come into play like man-power, supervision, staff strength, capital, global network etc and that is why they are refered to as BIG Studios.

Conclusion
There is Big Potential for Animations in Africa and the surface of it has not even been scratched. At the moment we are an entertainment consuming continent relying on the outside world for short Animated Movies, Animated Adverts and almost about anything that spans between 3D games and apps. The African Companies that engage the services of these international studios are not convinced that we at home have come of age in delivering to them what they want done, The tide could turn around if African Animation Studios would undertake proper Animation lessons to understand and apply the fundamentals of Animations and in turn encouraged with resources or some form of investment  that will aid in the effectively running of the Animation Studio.

My Character Animation Ad.

Hello Guys and Welcome to your favorite Animation blog, HypefroActive. Geez, a lot has happened and plenty more is lined up on the way but the good thing is that, it's all for the good. Ok, as you know i've been away for some time and again as usual i apologize and hope to improve on my service and communication skills in time to come. Because when you look at it, good or bad i really shouldn't have gone for that a long time, so again i hope you accept my apologies and we can go back to been friends, reasoning and seeing things from the animation point of view and ultimately moving forward.

Well, i did promise to do a fight animation some time back and i've reminded us of that on several occasions but i still haven't done it for some reasons beyond my control. But i will get it done. I just have my hands filled at the moment plus a lot of things coming as snags to take care of. Amongst those "small things" ladies and gentlemen is the "Animations to facial Expressions". I have been battling how to do this right for a while now, just like the Big boys get it done in the Big Studios and much progress have not been made until now. Granted, in my previous shots, there are change of expressions from extreme to extreme poses, but these things are wrongly applied, so they don't really tell the story like i want it to, for the most part anyways. However, after a series of head breaking researches carried out under the most stressful conditions, this research is finally yielding the desired results. An enhanced low poly model, created in 3dsmax and rigged with the CAT rig is what will be doing the talking when you click this link https://youtu.be/aaXIf9HOayo

Another cool thing about this animation is that it's done with the CAT rig and unlike my many other anime shorts that i've done, i didn't kill myself animating this character. As you can see, it's an Ad that i intend to put out there whose purpose is to sell my services. Now in creating this i did a lot of things differently. such as planning the short, drafting a brief and sticking to the brief. That's the main reason why the animation is looking different from my other animations asides the fact that i've improved quite considerably from before. And you could call it an upgrade from my previous jobs. Anyways later in the week, i hope to bring something exciting here and on this blog so, stick around and happy animating.

My Recent Animation shot for March 2015. A dialogue.

Hello Peeps and welcome to another exciting edition of Animations on HypefroActive. It's been quite a while and there is a shot i am yet to deliver but not to worry because that shot is here. I would have been updating you guys on my progress but didn't want to bore you with all of that as i kind of thought that it would be best to finish up and post the clip here. Well i did finish like two weeks back but couldn't post it until now. To this end, i apologize.

The shot is my most recent till date, animated in 3dsmax using the CAT rig and everything animated traditionally, meaning no MOCAP. All right, with no further ado, here it is https://youtu.be/4Y7EG8X4a0k

Also, i did mention that i'll do a fight animation which i hope to, after one more dialogue animation shot. So watch share and enjoy. Until we meet again, keep animating.

My Anime shot for March (A Dialogue). The Presidential Speech.

Hello HypefroActive fans and welcome to another exciting edition of Animations on HypefroActive. The year is 2015 and the month is march. The month where we march on to Greatness. Ok, so as usual i'm on my grind animating and i did mention that i'll be doing a fight anime but i kinda slowed down to something a bit different probably to calm my nerves and relieve me of the anxiety. So what am i doing? I'm doing a dialogue animation. Just one character talking away and making gestures. I've been practicing alot of things lately including cooking up a formula for me to work with so it's time to test these things out.

As usual, i'm going low poly and i'm using the 3dsmax CAT rig, the "base human". It's not a very flexible rig to animate with especially at the pelvis region, so that part i have to manage so as to get close to the required results but the upside to this is that animating the fingers wont be much of a problem because it comes with a preset that you can save already created animations and load as well. Matter of fact, the major reason i use the CAT rig is not just because it's easy to set up but also because, of the Hand presets. And did i also mention that you can manually animate the fingers to give various feels like someone holding on to a wall, with the fingers strained at the tips to show that strength is been transferred there to hold the person up, or in holding a vase realistically such that there is this feeling of firm grip around the fingers. So, when it comes to hand animations, i'ld say the CAT rig is not doing a bad job at all. As a matter of fact most things about the rig are ok for animating even if it's primary function or better function would be to transfer motion data from another rig to it.

In this shot i have come to agree that YES, rig does matter a lot depending on what you hope to achieve with it. And that doesn't mean if you have the best setup rig in the world of anime your animations would be any better, as this is not always true. The most important thing here would be knowing how to animate at all then the issue of rig would later come into place. And that's when you can say, "oh if i had a better rig, this animation would have come out better than it is now". Another thing that would further help would be to understand your rig, know it's limitations and know when exactly to use what "within the rig" for instance when to switch from ik to fk while animating and stuffs like that.

Ok, back to my anime shot, i started out with this Jeff Lew super hero intro that he used in one of his training dvds. While he was animating it looked simple but i tell you, if you don't understand exactly how the various parts of the human body interacts with each other, animating just that piece of about forty frames might not happen. I once tried it a looooong time ago and it looked ok after many failures and back then, even as i knew that something was missing or "a lot of things were missing" and my friends smiled and applauded and if you ask me back then, it really did look cool. Now fast forwarding into the near future and Months later, precisely right now, and i'm looking at it and comparing it to this other new one and i feel like strangling myself. Like seriously... WHAT WAS WRONG WITH ME back then? I guess knowing that there was this thing that i used to do in this particular way back in the day, will not work now in 2015, so i have to improvise, make and apply the necessary changes.

Ok, That's all for today. Until we meet again, keep animating, keep improving on previous works and with some consistency and focus, you'll get there.

P.S: I intend finishing this anime before next week runs out or maybe less. Then we'll see where we go from there.

My #FightAnimation. Done with 3dsmax CAT from scratch.

Hello People and welcome to another exciting edition of Animations on HypefroActive. Today's episode continues and concludes my fight anime edition. It's been ready for a while and has been on YouTube but couldn't find the time to post it here. To that effect, i ask that you please accept my sincere apologies. Ok without further ado, here is the link to the anime http://youtu.be/f73kM3Zg6X0.

As usual it was done in 3dsmax from start to finish and rigged with CAT, a plugin in 3dsmax. About the anime, i wasn't sure of what i wanted people to see in terms of violence and we are in a sensitive period here in my country Nigeria, so i decided to take it slow at least for build-up sake. I intend to make a follow up to the video but i had to stop so that i create a dialogue type of anime. You see, facial expressions and body curls are calling me. They disturb me in my sleep, Lolz. Ok, i learnt a couple of new tricks of my own that will help better my animation prowess and probably put me up there. Something more like my own formula and i really want to try it out. And when that is done i'll return to produce the sequel to the fight animation.

Alright, that's all for the day. I'll see you guys soonest but do not relent. Keep Animating.

Making a Fight Animation with 3dsmax CAT.

Hello Guys and welcome to another exciting edition of Animations on HypefroActive. Yeah, i'm still on my fight animation and it's taking quite longer than expected but i guess this can be excused because as you get better, you get to see things from an angle you don't usually see these things from and you try not doing the same old dumb thing whilst trying to improve on the quality of  your animations.

Ok, that excuse didn't quite sell or maybe not making that much of sense to you as intended but the truth is i didn't want to bore you guys with everyday WIPs or so from my daily output. I'm still on it and it's broad. It might probably end up as the longest anime that i've had to churn out because i'm trying to tell a story or at least show something with the passing frames or shots. Here is a WIP from the fight animation illustrated with the 3DSmax CAT rig http://youtu.be/_iRY7prvz5E .

Ok, so i have been on this project for about three weeks or so and so far i have two characters rigged and animated with 3dsmax CAT. There will be no speech or dialogue just simple gestures and i plan releasing the shots in stages. This stage is the Intro where the two characters stand off and size up one another but somehow, i've extended it so that there's a little bit of contact in this scene but not shown on the shot posted above.

Right now, i'm polishing whatever it is i can about the animation and imputing facial gestures (expressions to make the characters really come alive. Facial gestures will commence tomorrow as i'm not done with polishing the over two thousand frames i have so far.

I think the biggest challenge for me was getting to understand the fight moves and how to execute them as per animating. Ok, so i finally got over that but i was doing most of the animations using the straight ahead's which i've come to like because of it's ease of control and the flexibility you get in breaking down shots or poses.  It's brother, the Pose to Pose is good and that is what i grew up with and i used it towards the tail end of the shot. But using the "Pose to Pose" technique, all you have to do is create extreme poses in the beginning and at the end then put the break- down in the middle. Now everybody does this right, but there's something i used to do that i didn't. I create space for modifications or innovations as  i animate. That way i could come up with an idea later into an animation say i'm in like the two thousandth frame and would like to insert a new idea say at around say two hundredth frame. Well if i have created some space of about a hundred frames any where in between these frames, this new idea could easily slip in and become part of the animation and everything would happen naturally without choking the actions. Something like this happened in the earlier part of this animation shot as i had to completely take away the first two hundred frames and replace with the character just standing with body parts moving subtly. Again at the ending part, i wanted to insert a somersault so i squeezed that in after pushing some frames here and there but after landing it needed to ease out completely which i couldn't achieve because i had other frames lying closely ahead that must be fully translated as well. And i didn't want to risk that as a lot of interactions and things including links are in this part so that i don't create more trouble for me than necessary. So how do i get over this? Simple, i finish the animation, do a save as blablabla and work on the new save as.

Alright, that's all i have for today, i hope to complete this part of the animation this week as well as render it out. Until we meet again, keep the dream alive, keep animating.

How to Animate Fight Scenes. The things to consider and how to go about it.

Hello HypefroActive fans and welcome to another stunningly exciting edition of animations on HypefroActive. This episode kicks off from when i last blogged, even if i said i wouldn't want to bore you with my progress and yeah... i'm doing it again, i'm breaking my promise and i'm sorry about that but it cant be helped. Alright as you know we are in the month of January and HypefroActive will be going full throttle on animations and this takes effect from the beginning of the year. So let's get started.

Well as you know, my primary focus is on the newbie and that's why i'm here to help and encourage the newbie which brings me to the shot i'm rolling out next month. The shot has two characters in it with the scene not yet determined but i've began animating. It's a fight scene, low poly but i'm hoping i get the moves right and make it as interestingly comical as much as i can and not forgetting the realism which is of course why i'm embarking on it in the first place. So, i've got for you guys a couple of shots from my work-in-progress WIP. So far, for me it's coming out really nice and the best of all is that both characters are rigged in 3dsmax CAT, with everything  animated from scratch and that means there's NO element of MOCAP in it, just manually created animation frames.

So how is it i'm able to animate or come this far doing this fight scene you ask? well, let's just say i know one or two things about it plus i watch a lot of television and i love fighting sports. From wrestling, boxing, the martial arts and everything in between. Well almost about everything in between. So for me, animating a fight scene would be challenging as with other artists but would be interesting as well. Because the idea of bringing things to life through animating alone is something special how much more when you do uncommon things with it, in extra-ordinary ways. Now one thing that i've come to realize is that, everyday we live, all that we pick up from watching movies to interacting with other people including all other things that may not look important comes into play when animating. So nothing is a waste as no knowledge is lost because these little things that you ignore are what you actually are animating, for how are you able to animate what you do not understand. Sometimes, it's not just the principles of animations that counts.
Certain dance steps would require that you understand the dance move enough to be able to animate it. Take for instance a Michael Jackson dance move. Lets think about it and break the possible key challenges down so that we understand a bit of what it is to animate anything at all. In MJ's dances, he does the tap dance for a while, twists and turns 360 or so, then do a couple of weird hand poses, grabs his zipper area, and don't forget the signature kicks and moon walk. The list is endless but the point i'm trying to make here is that, for you to animate an MJ dance you have to consider as well as know how to do all of these things. Because in the process, there'll be need for you to test these things out, more like acting them out to see what moves and when. And this is the formula for creating virtually anything animation-wise even if there's a lot more to it, but it all begins with testing things out. Yeah, now you get my point.

Anyways and as usual, i'm posting these images from my WIP so that you see it first and when i'm done again with it, i'll post the finished shot here first as well. So until we meet again, let this images inspire you or better still find something to inspire you to create Awesome animations and in no time you'd be a Pro just like the ones in the Big Studios.