Author Archives: Xijian Hong

3D animation fundamentals showreel

Posted in 3D animation fundamentals | Leave a comment

Performance animation

Our assignment at the end of term 1 is to create a performance animation which should last about 10 seconds. At the beginning, I wanted to make a performance outdoors. However, I was unable to find a person who could … Continue reading

Posted in 3D animation fundamentals | Leave a comment

Week 7: body mechanics

Reference Keyframes When I selected keyframes, my method was to play the footage back and forward to find out the moments when the character at some key poses or direction of movement change, for examples when the hands and feet … Continue reading

Posted in 3D animation fundamentals | Leave a comment

Week 8: phonemes and performance

In this week, we mainly learned about how to import audio into maya as well as to make phoneme animation. The audio which is going to be imported into maya has to be 32000 Hz, 16 bits and wav format. … Continue reading

Posted in 3D animation fundamentals | Leave a comment

Character and story development in 3 TV series

The Queen’s Gambit This drama tells the growth experience of a female genius from an orphan to a world chess champion. This is a major female lead drama, and it is also a ‘cool drama’. Unlike other dramas of this … Continue reading

Posted in Design for animation, narrative structure & film languages | Leave a comment

Week 5: 3DEqualizer tracking

3DEqualizer is a powerful lens motion tracking software, specially designed for 3D movement tracking. Through the highly accurate motion tracking calculation function, it can accurately output a large number of filters from any real shot film, which can be proceeded … Continue reading

Posted in 3D animation fundamentals | Leave a comment

Week 5: story structure

Story circle Dan Harmon created the story cycle, a distillation of the monomyth into 8 steps, which is believed to be universal for any story in any medium. The most basic form is we draw a horizontal line through the … Continue reading

Posted in Design for animation, narrative structure & film languages | Leave a comment

Week 4: visual culture

Mise en scène Mise en scène is the stage design and arrgement of actors in scenes for a theatre or film production, both in visual arts through storyboarding, visual theme, and cinematography, and in narrative storytelling through direction. Set design … Continue reading

Posted in Design for animation, narrative structure & film languages | Leave a comment

Week 3: politics affect media

Game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided posited a world of cybernetic enhancements, divided by “mechanical apartheid,” but publisher Square Enix repeatedly denied that its imagery of societal separation and prison camps had anything to do with the real world of racial divisions. Far Cry … Continue reading

Posted in Design for animation, narrative structure & film languages | Leave a comment

Week 3: whole body walk cycle and constraints

This week, our task was to choose one character from resources to create a full body walk cycle. I chose the hottest girl model. Reference A walk cycle can be basically divide into 4 sections: contact, low point, passing, high … Continue reading

Posted in 3D animation fundamentals | Leave a comment