Self-Critique

For the final animation that I submitted, there is actually an error that I cannot resolve.

When the arm reaches the third box, the position of the third box actually goes above the arm. I tried adjusting the blend parent to 1 but the problem persist. Even without the blend parent, the position of the box is also not placed at the position that I wanted. I tried keying in the attributes for the position but the problem still persist too.

I assume that the cause of this error made is because of the constrain problem. Through the process of completing this project, I'd realized that the starting process of constraining part is very important as it will affect the whole animation if there's a minor error made while doing the constrains for the boxes. The error existing in the animation might be due to the neglection during the constraining part which, therefore, lead to the error made today.

1. Character (Coddy)

During the process of carrying the boxes and stacking them up, Coddy will be having the thoughts of when is it going to stop as he is starting to feel bored of the work that is repeating.
Thoughts that are running through Coddy's mind will be, "Why is it so boring...", "When is it going to stop?".

2. Storyboard

Coddy is busy with lifting of the boxes and putting it in place when it comes to a box that the he lifted and can't be released.

Coddy tried to release it for a few times by shaking the box off lightly and then slowly become tired and irritated with it and starts to shake the box off vigorously.

Coddy gave up in trying.

In the end, the box dropped on it's own when Coddy stop trying. Coddy got no idea and cannot react to what is happening.




1) Coddy start picking up box

2) He picked up and want to bring it to the other side

3) He stacked the boxes up

4) Coddy pick up another box

5) He cannot release the box

6) He try shaking it the box off




7) Coddy is tired of trying.

8) The box drop by it's own and Coddy was shocked.

9) He got no idea what is happening and do not know how to react to it.

Lab 13

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.


The actions from both lamps actually shows that the bigger lamp is older as compared to the smaller lamp. In the animation, the smaller lamp appears to be more active and playful as compared to the bigger lamp. The smaller lamp keeps playing with the ball rather than the bigger lamp.

When the bigger lamp first saw the ball, it has no interest in the ball and keep pushing the ball away. Unlike the smaller lamp, it shows much more interest in the ball and keep playing with it. The animation portrayed the scene by implementing reasonable fact like how children and adults will react when they saw toys or when they are playing with toys.

Lastly, another example that shows that the bigger lamp is older than the smaller lamp is that the smaller lamp moves around with the ball throughout the whole animation. Unlike the bigger lamp which stays still all the way because it has no interest in the ball as compared to the smaller lamp.

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

An example is when the small lamp jumps on the ball and keep bouncing on it. Luxo Jr chose to let the ball be inflated during the process when the smaller lamp is on it so that it will be funnier as compared to when the ball inflated while the smaller lamp is kicking around with it.

The timing for the ball to inflat actually contribute to humour element in the animation. If the timing for the ball to inflat was during the process when it was being kicked around, it may not seems as funny or cute as compared to when it inflated during the process when the lamp was bouncing on it. This shows that timing is actually important in creating an animation.

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 to prevent errors from occuring in the process of animating the object or character. If there are no hierarchy being formed, we might face problem in animating different actions of the character as we do not know which is the correct part to edit. This will affect the quality of the animation.

1) Do you need to be able to draw well to create good 2D animation? Explain your view.

Personally, I don't think that to create a good 2D animation requires a good drawing skills.
Most importantly is to be able to sketch or plan what exactly we want in the animation and go about doing it. Moreover, 2D does not require as much details as compared to 3D, therefore, simple sketches can also help us get our way through in creating

2) Do you need to be able to draw well to create good 3D animation? Explain your view.

Mastering a good drawing skills do make it much more easier in creating a 3D animation but as technologies starts improving, more and more features were being built into 3D programs which bring more conveniences in creating a good 3D animation even if you do not have superb drawing skills.

For example, 3D programs like Maya have many built in features that help us to create good animation. Simple sphere, cubes, cylinder can be easily created within a few clicks in the program.

Therefore, I think that having superb drawing skill is not essential but a bonus in creating good 3D animation. What matter most is the product that we are going to present.

3) What do you think would separate a piece of poor animation from a piece of good animation? In other words, how would you go about deciding if a piece of animation is good or bad?

Personally, I find the most important key to a good animation is not about the content but the quality of graphics. The quality of the graphics will determine if a particular animation is good enough especially when we are focusing more on 3D object.

4) In 2D animation, you need to be very aware of timing at a frame by frame level, using timing charts and other techniques - but for 3D animation, this is handled using the graph editor, which is more concerned with manipulating rates of change over time.

Does this affect how you approach your animation work? Explain.

It will affect how we approach our work to a certain extent that we might neglect the important detail that we need to look into about too. Timing charts are also important in ensuring that the animation runs well and smoothly. If we do not focus on the timing charts, animation will not be as nice due to reasons like graphics do not flow smoothly frame to frame.

5) Give a brief critique of Maya as an animation tool. Don't just say Maya makes animation difficult, or easy, or that you need to learn a lot of stuff to use Maya - explain what Maya does well and not so well in terms of creating animation.

Maya does well in creating animation in a way that the program allows us to do many things without having to switch to other programs in the process of creating a good animation. We can create models, decorate the scenes, link all the scenes together, add special effects and etc. It's like a one stop area for creating an animation as the program is equipped with many useful features. But this one stop area also make it tougher to find the features that you want to use because it is a one stop area, therefore, many things were being cramp together in a program making it tedious for us to do simple task.

Week 11, E-learning, Squash and Stretch.

Why is squash and stretch so useful in animation?

The squash and stretch technique is useful in animation because it can make the animation look more realistic, as if you are watching it from real life, because the technique adopted the real characteristic of, for example, how a ball bounce across a room in real life.

Think of a situation in which extreme squash and stretch could be applied to a character - try to be original.

I think that the process of cracking an egg can be a situation whereby extreme squash and stretch can be applied to.

The squash can be when the egg was being cracked, the process of the yolk and egg white before landing into bowls or plate and the squash part will be when the yolk and egg white landed onto the bowl or plate. Because before landing, it's shape will be like a giant water drop and when it landed, it became flat.
I'm not sure whether the stretch part is valid but the effect of squash part can actually be fully illustrated just when the egg land onto the surface.

Think of an animation example where squash and stretch would NOT be appropriate.

I think squash and stretch will not be applicable if the animation illustrate a person hopping his way across somewhere. Because human cannot be stretched and squashed when hopping, logically. It may seems that there are a bit of stretching and squashing but using human might not be able to successfully illustrate the squash and stretch movements.

If squash and stretch doesn't really happen so obviously in real life, why do you think is it so effective in animation?

Personally, I think the reason why squash and stretch is effective in animation is because it helps to draw people's attention and also make the animation more realistic as though it's real. In order to make an animation to be as realistic as in real life, exaggerated movement like squash and stretch will be needed to show the movement of certain objects that involves similar movement when in real life.

Week 10

What is ease-in-ease-out in reference to animation?

Ease-in-ease-out refers to a process during a particular movement for something.
The process of ease-in-ease-out occurs when it involves a different speed in actions. For example, a running scene. Before the character starts to run, their speed will be slow initially then increases when the character starts running and slow down again when they are about to stop.

What does frames per second mean?

It refers to the number of scenes being played within a second.

12 Principles of Animation

The principles of animation was firstly being introduced by the Disney animators, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas. There are a total of 12 basic principles of animation and the purpose of the principles is to produce an illusion of characters adhering to the basic laws of physics, but they also dealt with more abstract issues, such as emotional timing and character appeal. The 12 basic principles of animation are: 1. Squash and stretch 2. Anticipation 3. Staging 4. Straight ahead action and pose to pose 5. Follow through and overlapping action 6. Slow in and slow out 7. Arcs 8. Secondary action 9. Timing 10. Exaggeration 11. Solid drawing 12. Appeal In order for us to understand more about how to use the principles, a few short clips were being taken to practice the principles.







This video imply on the principle anticipation. Anticipation is being used to prepare the audiences that something is going to happen. In the videos, the attempts of throwing the object shows that object will be thrown after the attempts were being made and the other one shows that the person is going to jump up because she started with bending her knee down before really jumping up.




I think that this video shows the principle of overlapping because the object was being thrown up and landed down. The process of being thrown up and landing shows overlapping.



This video shows the principle of pose to pose. Pose to pose refers to actions being perform by two people in a single scene. In the video, the two people were dancing.



This video implies the exaggerating principle as the person started running and suddenly stops in front of the camera. This created a sudden effect to the people hence making it look exaggerating.