Long time no see! Since the end of October, I’ve traded in the time I usually spend on these animation exercises and blog posts for something pretty exciting; An animation challenge!

Whether it’s the 11 Second Club or Agora Community’s AnimChallenge, participating in a month long animation challenge was something I’ve always wanted to try. But between finding the time to do it and doubting my own skills, I’ve just never felt ready to follow through. But after much (MUCH) delay, I’m psyched to have finally crossed this one off the list!

In my time learning animation, nothing has helped me more than a good ol’video tutorial. Getting to watch an animator walk and talk through their process is an absolute education goldmine. There are so many fantastic online educators who have created a wellspring of extremely helpful animation resources. One that has really helped me over the years is professional animator and educator Sir Wade Neistadt. Sir Wade posts all sorts of immensely helpful animation tutorials and explainer videos that breakdown a lot of 3D animation fundamentals. Back when I was first learning about Maya’s constraint system, like in my Arms Crossed post, I can’t tell you how many times I watched and re-watched his constraints guide video.

So needless to say, I was genuinely surprised when I saw his latest one; it was an animation challenge!

And on top of that, the judging panel consisted of several fantastic profession animators/educators who I’ve followed for a while too. Most of which I’ve learned a lot from through their videos and breakdowns. And there were prizes!?

I figured if I was going to finally attempt an animation challenge, this would be the perfect opportunity to give it a shot. And so I did!

The rules were pretty simple: Use at least one of the two character rigs provided by Autodesk, have the character enter screen left and exit forward screen rig, and keep it between 120-360 frames at 24 fps (5-15 seconds). The rest was up to us!

I decided to really try to challenge myself with this one and use both characters. Since Ash presents as a kind of musical character, I made the decision to try to create a type of animation I’ve never attempted before; a dance! Did I regret this later? Of course!

But after many, many hours spent animating over the course of a month, I completed the animation juuuust in time! (I may or may not have submitted it just a few minutes before submissions closed…)

Here’s the final result! With sound!

All things considered, I’m pretty happy with this! Now, admittedly, this isn’t quiiite the one I submitted on the 15th. It’s close, but the day after I submitted my animation, I went back and polished things up a bit more. Added sound too, which unfortunately wasn’t included in my entry.

I used a layered workflow to create this motion. In practice, this basically means I animated the character one section of the body at time. Here’s a shot progression breakdown I put together to show the process:

As you can see, things look absolutely ridiculous at the start, but as you layer on more motion, the character comes to life. I’ve been experimenting a lot lately with this layered approach. It’s quick to start, and you get a good feel for the motion early in the process. I’m planning on jumping between the traditional pose-to-pose method and this layered one to get a better feeling for the use case of each workflow. But more on that another time!

ANYWAY! I’d like to extend a HUGE thank you to Sir Wade and the folks over at Autodesk for putting together this challenge. I’ve been hesitant to give one of these challenges a try, but I’m so glad I gave it a go. It was genuinely fun to get to participate, and I’m so excited to see everyone’s entries!

Thanks for reading!

Ash and Boomie Rigs by Autodesk
Maya Viewport VFX Rigs by Shadrak Guichard-Foster
Boombox Rig by Rodrigo Lopez
Hipster Rock by Benjamin Geyer

My Links: ArtStation / Instagram / Vimeo / YouTube