Assignment No.1: Animation Tests (Surly Bob)

These are the animation tests for the character, Surly Bob. I used these test animations to experiment with his personality and the different emotions and actions that will need to be dealt with his character during the creation of the final scene.



The above sequence is a demonstration of Surly Bob's angry personality. He is knocking a bottle of the table in a fit of rage. This is not a sequence planned for the final scene but it will make a good reference for his facial expressions and bodily movements as he is angry and frustrated for most of the scene.



The above sequence is a demonstration of Surly Bob's walk cycle. He is the only character is the game in which the audience will be able to see him walking and so this is the only walk cycle I have created within my series of test animations. As the this character is drunk, I had to make this obvious with his walk cycle, which I found a bit difficult. His shoulders and hips don't move properly and so quite a bit of the movement is thrown off. I also did a dodgey job with the arm movements, which also throws the sequence off a bit. Although, despite these problems, the animations still gives a basic idea of what this character's walk cycle is to be like. I also tested out this animation on a couple of people, minus the bottle of scotch, and they were able to pick out that he was drunk.



The above sequence is a demonstration of an enraged attack Surly Bob engages on the protagonist. As this is to be part of the main action sequence of the final scene i thought it would be a good idea to use it as one of my test animations. Also, getting the character to swing the chair with a proper motion curve, while also moving the body with it to give the motion a sense of force was difficult and took me a couple of attempts to get right. The emotion on the character's face is also very important for this sequence and i spent a while trying to make it look convincing of his anger and fierceness. This test animation is almost good enough for the final scene and hopefully with a bit of tweaking it will be fit for it.