3D ANIMATION SHOWREEL

Maybe I could've walked in the footsteps of my dad, who is a surgeon, but some miscommunication happened, and now while he's reanimating - I am animating. I can't tell what brings more happiness: bringing the character to life and making it believable or seeing the gleam in the rigger's eyes after hearing that it's the last iteration and the rig works flawlessly. 

The majority of the animation research shown here will be devoted to the Guardian animation for the Final Major Project, Alder's Bane. The wooden bear creature demanded a lot of thorough exploration of the bear's iconic poses and movements, which then allowed me to reach hyperrealism in creature animation. 

My research on the Guardian Bear was heavily inspired by Disney. The way they combined 'bearly' behaviour with mannerisms, different characters and emotions seemed extremely fascinating to me. However, since our film strives for a realistic fairytale style, I was mostly exploring real-life pieces. Also, because our species has antlers resembling those of a deer, I observed deers, moose, and occasionally bisons, which (due to the weight) resemble heavy bears in terms of movement dynamics.

WALK CYCLE WITH DEMO RIG

While waiting for a proxy rig, I worked on the demo rig tests to understand bear walk spacing, special features of their behaviour, and their iconic poses. Getting the right weight appeared to be rather challenging. Not only do they have different feet mechanics, but their scapula part may vary from a very stable type of movement to a large side-to-side amplitude motion. 

image 1 - The head overlap tends to follow the clavicle movement, and that's why the head position in comparison with the central axis of the body in the front view was some sort of checkpoint for me.

image 2 - After I understood the process of visualising the creature's weight, everything else fell into place, i.e. feet stopped twitching, and the place for shoulder blades' reaction appeared.

image 3 - As highlighted by Aaron Blaise, bears make a step in a way strikingly similar to the human's walk i.e. putting their weight on the heel.

ROAR 

In terms of roaring, I have noticed numerous typical bear features. Firstly, it is worth considering the head angle. The loudness of a bear's roar is slightly lower than a lion's 114 dB. The amount of energy that goes into roaring is proportionally big. Consequently, their head, during the roar, always follows the body dynamics that start in the lungs and, thus, turns in the direction of the sound energy flow. 

While exploring the bear's roar, I also turned to their yawn since it seemed noteworthy to understand how to avoid the "yawn" look in our scene. The difference was striking. Their head barely rises, Levator Nasolabialis muscles almost don't move at all, and the tongue slightly comes out.

LINE OF ACTION

After doing some studies on the bear's body shape, I came up with the conclusion that bears consist of flexible circles and ovals which can transform into each other in different poses. This type of body structure is extremely convenient for defining arcs for future animation. However, since our Guardian creature has reindeer horns as well, I considered an additional arch on their movement as well. I made this sketch on the stage when I thought that moose antlers would have given the creature a more powerful silhouette, yet I reckon it was useful as an inspiration in terms of forms. 

HITTING POSES

As advised by Professional Animators, 2D Animation is the best to research the poses on a flat screen. As an animator, my main task in this pre-production was to test out the proxy rig and figure out the modelling and rigging questions. As mentioned before, Aaron Blaise's artworks were the best to experiment with poses.

To test out the new proxy rig, I started with hitting the extreme poses. Even though the rig itself had some limitations to hitting the pose, I was still trying to get the best out of it and see whether it was rigging or modelling causing some wrong proportions.

Eyes are, indeed, the best reflection of emotion or, I would say, translator of the inside reaction to the outside world, and bears are no exception here. Even though the proxy rig didn't have face controls I thought it would be beneficial to explore the closeups of bears' faces and to plan out which face controls would be essential in the end. Based on the research, I have figured out that Levator Nasolabialis, malaris, whisker bed, and occipitalis muscle are taking the biggest part in facial expressions, so the most important controls are going to be in the nose, lips, and eyebrows/forehead area. Eventually, this will require small additional controllers to achieve a subtle yet expressive emotion. Interestingly enough, their mouth somehow bears a resemblance to the more familiar golden retriever's mouth.

Looking for a way to approach the same style between three animation freelancers, we came up with Motion Capture as the best possible solution. It helped to maintain the same pace and style of the protagonist's walk throughout the cinematic. Here are some of the shots with mocap animation, which I was responsible for. 

All of the close-up shots, though, were done with a hand-key animation. They took slightly longer since facial animation had to follow the same hyperrealistic style. While working on Alder's emotions, I was aiming to create a character who has his own story full of feats, yet now that his hand is cursed, he feels vulnerable, unexpectedly for himself. Thus, eye dart conveys his worried to the extent of an anxious state, whilst his pursed lips show a highly concentrated mind and willingness to fight

While working on the demo rig animation, I was sketching some of the Guardian concepts to catch the proportions and the forms of the creature in 2D space. This interpretation was mainly focused on reaching the undeniable understanding that this bear-like monster is there to protect the ancient temple. The bear's hump provided a great area for the moss hill on the back, whilst Ents from The Lord of the Rings served as the inspiration for the interwoven branch feet. Also, moose antlers appeared to fit the silhouette of the creature; however, it was decided to stop on the deer-like horns.

Apart from the main project, I was working on short personal animations. Among them are: the Bison Walk Cycle animation for the muscle simulation tests, the seagull animation inspired by the clumsiness of these birds, the tiger animation produced as an animation test for Technicolor and my most experimental piece based on Stromae's Quand c-est?