Motion Capture
Although we began learning about motion capture in the early weeks of the semester, I still find it fascinating. Becoming more familiar with the process has increased my confidence and opened up greater opportunities to apply it in the future.
This time during the motion capture session, I experimented with a range of movements, including fencing, falling, sitting in a chair, and playing the guitar, among others. I found the experience more enjoyable than before, though I still felt a bit awkward while acting. I’m looking forward to the upcoming acting workshop, as I believe it will help me better understand how to perform specific actions effectively for animation.
Experimental Project Progress
I have started doing some testing and have begun animating using stop motion.
I find stop motion animation harder and more time consuming than 3D animation. It might be just as time consuming as 2D animation because you have to create every single frame yourself, instead of only doing the key poses and letting the software generate the in-betweens. Another limitation is that once you finish shooting the stop motion, you cannot easily make changes to keyframes like you can in 2D or 3D animation.
Also, I cannot zoom in with the camera or software to get a closer view of the shot. I have to physically arrange the props or move the camera closer, which adds extra challenges during production.
Despite these difficulties, I find stop motion very appealing because the small imperfections make the animation feel more human and less mechanical or computer-generated. I want to embrace these errors and treat this project as an experimental opportunity to explore and play with stop motion.
Although I expect my teacher may have many critiques on the animation later, I am excited to learn from the process.
Yesterday I tested a small stop motion animation. It was really challenging to animate every single body part because the armature is quite fragile and tends to break after each movement even within just these two seconds of the video.
I will work on improving the armature since it still has several limitations.