Animation Progress/Tests

Little Girl

Below is a series of animation tests with the little girl character. Some that would make it into the final cut of the film while others can be considered deleted scenes.

This is a deleted scene where in the original story where the little girl eventually reunites with her lost father, now an air-warden, and reacts with surprise. Got the influence for this shot by seeing online videos of many girls who have happily but tearfully reunited with their marine fathers who have been away for a long time. Sadly this shot won't be used.

Just a simple rotation of the head with the hair system activated.

Simple animation test of subtle facial expression, including eye blinking and further simulation of the hair system.

An early animation test of the little girl waving to the air warden off-screen. Still needs to be adjusted with the keyframes.

More facial expression in this test and movement of the eyes. One of the first tests in making the girl react to something, which would be a robin that flies past her. the robin will be added later on.

Animation test of the girl supposedly waving goodbye to the robin which will fly off into the distance. Have to improve the waving by tweaking with the keyframes.

Rough test of the girl walking closer to the camera, stopping and then looking upwards to her left. This will now be a considered a deleted scene as I'll be working on a new shot with this performance.

A rough shot of the girl moving her foot away as if reacting to something, which will be a piece of old newspaper.

Another test for a shot where the girl treads on a newspaper which rustles loudly and therefore makes her react. Still need to work on the face and adjust the keyframes in the graph editor.

Another test similar to the girl reacting to a robin flying towards but in this one, she turns around as the robin supposedly flies around her head.

A simple test of rotating the head to see how the hair would react to the motion and physically collide with the head.

Hair test, trying to figure out how to fix a problem where the hair follicles keep flickering every few frames.

Another test with the hair system, the clump controls changed.

Test with the hair display quality turned down and the curve attraction turned to 0. Notice how the curves collide droop down over the head. 

One more test of just rotating the head to see how the hair reacts.

One problem that occurred was that the blendshapes did not work properly when the head was rotated, as shown in the image above. 

I solved this problem by selecting the inputs of all the blend shapes assigned to the girl's head and moving all the operations below the Skin Cluster and Tweak nodes as shown above. 

The problem with the blendshapes is now fixed as the blink blendshape stays in its true shape while the head is rotated by key frames.

Below is now a series of short animation reels showing other tests, some that will never be used in the final cut of the movie.

This video shows several tests of unfinished walk/run cycles. Was going to include a walk animation in the final cut but had to drop them due to changes in the project.

Father/Soldier (Deleted Shots)

Below are some animation tests of the soldier/father character before it was decided to change his role completely. 

Of course these shots will not be used in the final cut of the film but they are part of the progress and have shown what I need to sort out or change for future shots.

The air warden character has been animated in all the shots involving him by Lien who offered to assist me with some of the animation progress.