Character Animation

Ready to put your creativity in motion? Learn how to apply the classic principles of character animation to 3D models using Autodesk Maya. In six hands-on lessons, character animation phenom Cristin McKee guides you through 14 principles of animation ranging from squash and stretch and anticipated movement to the expression of personality and thought.

Using Maya's high-level animation tools, you'll gain insight into the professional animator's approach, learning to work with hierarchical characters, create effective poses, properly time your shots, develop advanced walk cycles, and even make your characters think.

Whether you're interested in character animation for game cutscenes, cinematics, in-game animations, or other applications, this course will give you all the tools you need to get started. Each challenging lesson and exercise addresses professional-level techniques that will put you on the fast track to producing high-quality 3D character animations.

Cristin McKee is a character animator at Anzovin Studios ... get bio

Apply basic principles of animation with Maya including: squash and stretch, anticipation, and follow through.

Use the Maya Graph Editor and Dope Sheet to create natural-looking, overlapping action.

Apply overlapping action techniques to hierarchical, organic characters.

Implement secondary animation details for character personality and realism.

Use pose exaggeration to achieve strong dynamic and comedic effects.

Use keyframes and holds to properly time shots for optimal effectiveness.

Develop animations that incorporate character interaction and decision making.

Identify appropriate situations for use of forward kinematics and inverse kinematics, and implement them accordingly.

Apply arcs and weight shifts to characters, resulting in natural, believable motion.

Identify the animation possibilities within a pose and create a variety of effective character poses and gestures.

Develop a believable walk cycle and use posing within the cycle to create mood and personality.

Use animation techniques to indicate character thought and eye contact.

LESSON 1 Principles of Animation Lesson One launches the course with an overview of how to animate in Maya and an exploration of tried-and-true techniques including squash and stretch, anticipation, follow through, and overlapping. You'll learn how to work with a skeleton hierarchy as you animate in Maya and use the Graph Editor and Dope Sheet to refine your animations. You'll apply these techniques in the lesson's exercise, repairing a "broken" ball animation and animating a basic character with a tail.

LESSON 2 Animating Hierarchical Characters Just like a real human, a 3D character needs a skeleton to move naturally. In this lesson, you'll learn how to manipulate and pose a "rigged" character—one designed with a skeleton and joints. You'll explore how to create overlapping actions and secondary actions to impart grace and realism to your character and examine the challenge of animating a character's jump. In the exercise, you'll create a scene of your own in which a hierarchical character interacts with a prop.

LESSON 3 Lights! Camera! Acting! It's every director's dream... actors who are emotional, punctual, and obedient. (And geometrically perfect, but needing direction). Lesson Three explores some ways to add drama in animating your characters and hold the attention of your audience. You'll learn how to exaggerate motion to give a character feeling, and edit the timing in your animation, including holds to allow your audience to digest the action and feel immersed in the character's world. Exercise Three challenges you to create an expressive scene in which simple characters interact and make decisions.

LESSON 4 Playing with People: Basic Human Motion Lesson Four begins with a look at the two principal methods of animating character joints: forward kinematics and inverse kinematics. You'll learn how to edit FK and IK settings in Maya and learn the pros and cons of each approach. Then you'll focus on two important aspects of natural human motion: arcs and weight. The emphasis will be on how to create fluid, organic arc motions and apply realistic weight shifts to a character. In the exercise, you'll try your hand at making a character wave and animate your own weight shift

LESSON 5 Playing with People: Advanced Human Motion What makes an animated character interesting? Sometimes it's all in the pose: the perspective on the character seen by the audience in camera view. In Lesson Five, you'll learn techniques for creating poses that are compelling and read well onscreen. Topics include how to compose good character silhouettes, avoid twinning, and create effective hand gestures. The remainder of the lesson focuses on how to begin creating the different animated cycles used in game animations. In the exercise, it's time to give your character his first steps, creating walk cycles and one other cycle of repeated motion.

LESSON 6 Acting with Humanoids By Lesson Six, you're prepared to create effective, engaging character animations that incorporate many important principles of animation. The final lesson focuses on ways to finesse your work, by making your characters "think" through head movement and eye contact. You'll then get an indepth insight into how an animator approaches the creation of a complex shot, everything from analyzing and planning the animation, to blocking out poses in Maya, to adding special details. The final exercise challenges you to create your own pantomime scene from scratch: planning, blocking, and animating your work.