Session with George
This week, keyframe changes were made to last week’s work.
Because last week’s feedback was mainly for the part of my blocking, I made changes to some key frames of the action. Mainly when flying in the air to do some asymmetric movement modification, and make some subtle changes to make my movements more interesting.
It is possible to look quite similar to the previous version, but in fact several changes have been made.
One is about the duration, this one version of the action has a new pause, adding a sense of vibration of bumps up and down as it flies into the air. Although it is not yet very obvious, in later revisions, I will continue to enhance the stopping action here.
The second part of the change is about doing the asymmetric effect of the hands and legs. George suggested doing some slight movement inconsistency, which can make the overall movement more natural and vivid. I think after the adjustment it is indeed more natural than the previous action.
The third part is about the upper body direction and action adjustment, it includes the waist and hands, as well as the head. I modified it by making the range of motion stronger and making the movement look more obvious.
The fourth part is the adjustment of the final direction of the body’s attack. In the previous version, the final attack action was a direct forward attack, which may not be entertaining enough. When the action is turned to the side, the whole body movement is more clear and visually appealing, and more interesting.
Feedback！
Most of the feedback this time was focused on the overall body posture, such as having some parts of the body weight to shift down more. There are also some parts of the hand animation process to be more obvious, and the two hands do not move exactly the same, a little distinction is better.
When the body floats into the air, it allows the arms to do some asymmetrical movements.
It is suggested that an animation of the sphere of the shock wave can be added here, which will enhance the visual effect even more.
Artwork
My female character’s body model comes from a model done before.
At first I planned to make female character with long hair, so I found some reference pictures of hair, and then learned to draw every single shape of hair with brushes in Zbrush.
About the character’s clothing
The characters for the costumes are made in Md, which is an easy and quick way to make them. Since the clothes I want to make are rather special, it is a traditional Chinese dress – cheongsam（旗袍）. This kind of dress is figure-flattering, so I specifically searched on Youtube how to make a cheongsam in Md. Luckily I found a suitable video tutorial.
This is the link to the video tutorial website：
This is the first version of the dress I made following the tutorial. I used the default model in MD, so the size of the dress didn’t match my own model and couldn’t fit my own model’s body.
The second time, I imported my model into MD, then made the dress again, and adjusted the color of the dress to red in the software to test the visual effect. This time it was much more efficient.
Import clothing models into Maya
In fact, the dress model in Md and Maya are not compatible because the model in Md is a triangular face, while the model in Maya needs to be a quadrilateral face. So I used Maya’s auto topology function and then adjusted the wiring of the dress model according to my model.