A Lizard and a Raptor Animation

Raptor Animation

Hey guys, this is my first animation I did for my demo reel at Pixl Visn. Another fellow student gave me the task to let the raptor enter the hallway and walk him down the whole way. I had a lot of freedom realizing my own animation ideas. I just had to include some predefined details. It was a lot of fun and I hope you guys will like it.

The main idea was to show the raptor in a scary way, while he is walking through the old hallway. So I decided to let him walk slowly and let him act as he is searching for something. Simon de Payrebrune modelled and textured the raptor and the scene. He gave me the necessary freedom I needed to animate the Raptor in the narrow environment, which was a lot of fun. He just expected from me to let the raptor do some typical movements, that are known from big movies like Jurassic Park. For example, the strange movement with his toe or the snapping with his snout, he is doing at the door. The rig, made by Anthony Kersten, was awesome and if I needed something changed or new, he always knew what to do. I was responsible for the animation. All in all, I really like the animation. After half a year, with my current skill background I see some improvements options. 

Some problems I had: Of cause there were many little problems I had while I was animating, but who doesn’t have these little problems? The main three thing I had trouble with was the overlap of the tail, neck and the arms while he was walking, the transitions between slow and fast walking and the challenge to make him look alive and not CG.

I learned a lot about body mechanics with bigger and more complicated rigs in this project. You are always learning!

Simon Payrebrune: https://www.therookies.co/3dpayrebrune

Anthony Kersten: https://www.therookies.co/anthonyjk

Lizard Animation

Here you can see my animation of an exotic lizard. It is my second animation I did for my demo reel at Pixl Visn. I got some requirements from another fellow student I had to implement. His creative input was inspiring and I had a lot of fun to realize his design criteria. This lizard has a typical movement he does, I gave it the nickname “head bang”

The lizard had to run up the tree, take a break, do his typical “head bang” and then walk to another spot, where he snaps and turns his head to the camera. It was strange to animate an animal while he is walking up a tree trunk and not on the ground, but this was a welcome challenge. The character model, the textures and the set are made by Simon Pinsdorf. The rig is made by Anthony Kersten and I did the animation. It was fun and challenging to animate an animal with such short legs and a body that kinda looks like a tube. Due to the tough deadline I couldn’t polish it 100%, but I still think it looks great. I would love to animate another lizard with more freedom and some more time.

How I already mentioned, the short arms and legs were really challenging and difficult, because the lizard is running fast and shaky. It was tough to analyse the references because it’s not easy to find references that are useful, due to the fast movements of lizard causing motion blur. The fast swinging tail was also hard to polish. I had different ideas how the tail could move in these situations and I chose the best looking one. In addition, I had some challenges with the body deformation, because when you look at it frame by frame it looks like he is walking slalom. I had to playblast it many times and watch it in real time to make sure it looks great. The starting and the stopping of the lizard was also a big problem, because these sequences looked too much CG-like, when it is accelerating, but the real lizards are accelerating fast.

I learned a lot about fast body mechanic animations in this project.

Simon Pinsdorf: https://www.therookies.co/simonpinsdorf

Anthony Kersten: https://www.therookies.co/anthonyjk