Animating a dragon ~ part ten ~ The Showreel

 Here is my showreel of the animations created over the duration of this project, I hope you enjoy!

Animating a dragon ~ part nine ~ evaluation

With this blog post, I wanted to do an informal evaluation of this project, before putting together a final showreel for the next and final blog post of this project.

When I started out with this project, I hadn't animated anything other than bipedal movements before, let alone flying. However, I wanted to really dig into animal animation with this project, making somewhat of a case study of references. I feel that I have achieved this.

I started off with discussing what kind of animations I would like to create, such as bat like flight cycles:

As well as bird like:

Throughout this project, I have enjoyed researching real life animals for inspiration and referencing. This part of the project was very important, as it has greatly developed my skills in searching for reference as well as being able to better identify good reference material. 

While I am pleased with the work I've produced as well as the quantity, I do wish I dedicated more time to this project, if I had more time with this project, I would've enjoyed creating more ground movement cycles, such as one referencing a bear-like movement. I would've also have liked to create transitional animations so that there are take off and landing animations, which when combined with all of the animations would hopefully creating a unique and sophisticated animation set.


In conclusion, 
I am quite pleased with my work over the duration of this project, I believe it to be of decent quality, but not without plenty of room to improve, such as adding more rotational movement to the torso, for a few of my animations with this dragon rig, the torso has felt quite rigid. The same goes for the tail, I feel like if I had dedicated more time for more animations than I could've really gotten my head around the tail movements, whereas I currently feel that they are somewhat awkward. Going forwards, I hope I be able to make time to play around with this rig some more, as it is an extremely high quality rig as well as quite fun to animate.

Animating a dragon ~ part eight ~ animating a bat-like ground movement cycle

 With this animation, I was taking primary reference from this gif of a bat doing a weird hop thing, I figured it had potential to create a feral movement for a dragon.

First I started with the arm movement and the body movement.

This movement resulted in a sort of funny hop movement with the legs. Something that had to be fixed however.

Having next animated the legs as well as the head movement, the animation was starting to come together. However, the head movement felt too fast, and the tail also needed movement.

After animating the tail and tweaking the head movement, I was left with this, of which I am quite pleased, however it does feel a little bit goofy, perhaps it would be good as a start to a take off or just after a landing. 

Animating a dragon ~ part seven ~ animating a glide

I realised that I had forgotten to do a glide and so I set out to do a glide animation.
However, I soon found myself listening to the How to Train Your Dragon soundtrack and getting really into this animation. However, I think that my hours of work paid off.

I found that due to the wing movement during the glide, videos were necessary as gifs would miss a lot of the small movements that really make up this animation.
As usual, I started with the wings, animating one and then another.
I was using clips from How To Train Your Dragon as reference for the gliding, as the whole film has some amazing shots of this being used.

With both wings having this animation, the glide was really starting to come together. However, it seemed like the movement was far too fast, however I wanted to keep the same frequency of movement, so I opted to make the movement far smaller.

The wing on the left is the old one and the one on the right is the improved movement, I think that it is a real improvement. I also started to animate the head movement here, adding wind effects to some of the horns, however opting to keep the middle spine rigid as while the head spines were able to be animated, the rig did not allow for the spines anywhere else along the dragon to be animated.

With both wings now matching, the animation was really starting to come together.

I then started animating the feet, I decided to add wind movements to the toes as well.

While this tiny detail isn't very important, I felt that it really added to the animation's realism.

Afterwards, I animated slight movement on the tail and the body, leaving me with this.

I really enjoyed creating this glide, however it was quite tedious as almost every joint had lots of minute movements, barely moving at all. Due to how many keyed frames there were, just on the wings, I had to playblast the animation every time I wanted to check what the animation looked like as it would cause Maya's playback to be very laggy.
Overall however, I am very pleased with this animation.

Animating a dragon ~ part six ~ animating bird-like flight cycles

 In this post, I will be detailing over how I am going about animating bird-like dragon flight cycles. For these animations, I will be using the gifs in the previous post as reference for these flight cycles, much like how I did with the bat animations. One thing I noticed about the way how robins, crows and owls fly is that it is somewhat a progression of movement, with owls moving their wings the least and robins moving theirs the most. This progression will become more clear with the animations down below. 

To start off with, I animated the wing, just like with the bat like animation. This took a bit of tweaking to get how I want it to, it's still not 100% owl-like however, but it has become apparent that owls and dragons are not 100% the same either.

With both wings now flapping, it's really starting to come together. 

After the wings, I went about adding simple movements to the rest of the dragon, I wanted to keep this relatively simple due to a lot of birds, including owls, moving almost only their wings in flight.

I'm quite pleased with how the tail come out as well, in the Bat flight cycle, it seemed quite janky whereas this feels more natural.

Next, I will alter this animation to replicate how crows fly, which is not too different from owls.

The difference here is that the wing folds inwards when the wing is going upwards. However this simple difference creates a vast difference, personally I really like this one.

Here I've done the same but with a robin-esque flight, I'm not overly keen on this one at all, the wing movement is too quick, I had to use a playblast to be able to properly capture it rather than make a gif.

With this post, I would have accomplished the basics of what I set out to do with this project, analysing several different styles of flight from real animals and using those flight styles as reference for several different dragon flying cycles. 
In my next, and quite possibly final post, I shall be be doing an evaluation of this past project as well as posting a showreel of the work done.
However, before that post, I would like to attempt to do a ground movement cycle for the dragon, taking inspiration from the bat's weird and slightly creepy leaping jump movement.

Animating a Dragon ~ part five ~ research cont.

 In this blog post, I shall be continuing my research into how different animals fly so that I can use that as reference for animating a dragon.

This time, instead of a bat, I shall be analysing birds.

Before I begin, I would like to note that I expect different types of birds to fly differently, therefore I shall be researching different bird types, this mainly being something like a bird of prey along with a smaller bird like a Robin. I may also see how pigeons fly because pigeons are funny, however seagulls are the spawn of the devil. 

To start off with, I will be analysing how a barn owl flies, which is widely known to be a silent flyer, something that would be terrifying if a huge dragon was able to do the same.

Here we can see that when an owl flaps its wings, the wings first dip down, and then back up, with a bend in the middle with the rest of the wing following through on that movement. There is also a slight tilt with the wings as they reach their peak. The rest of the body has almost not movement however.

Albeit not a barn owl, this owl still flaps in a very similar way, we can see that the ends of the wings are slightly tilted upwards as well, this is something that is also replicated in the animation of Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon as can be seen in this gif from the previous post.

One thing that is common in a lot of birds of prey, including owls as you can see, is that a lot of time spent in the air is spent simply gliding, this is something I will have to take into account when animating a bird-like flight.

In this gif, we get a different angle on the barn owl's flight. This is useful to get different angles as we can better see how the wing moves forwards first, and then on it's way up, it arcs backwards.

Here we can see the iconic Robin, angling their body to intercept with the coconut, just magnificent. The robins movement is far more busy than the owls, when the wings are bought upwards, they also furl inwards. I imagine this is be more nimble against predators. This furling inwards of the wings would definitely be interesting to use on a dragon.

The crow flies in a somewhat of a halfway between a small bird like a robin and a large bird like an owl. It's wings take big movements, bending backwards only halfway down the wings.

Overall, all three of these birds have interesting and unique flight techniques, all of which would fit a dragon's flight I feel, in my next post, I shall be animating at least an owl-like flight, however due to that possibly having less going on than in the bat flight, I hope to also be able to do at least one more bird-like flight animation.

Animating a dragon ~ part four ~ discussion and analysis of dragon animations in media.

 While I'm animating a dragon, mostly inspired by real life references such as bats and bears, I thought I'd take a blog post to talk about how dragons have appeared in movies, video games and tv shows. This is because I want to talk about dragons and it gives me an excuse to watch films with dragons in.

To start off with, I'm going to talk about a film series: How to Train Your Dragon.

Produced by Dreamworks, however this isn't Dreamworks first time animating a dragon. In 2001, Dreamworks produced the masterpiece that is Shrek.

In Shrek, it appears that for the most part, the dragon moved somewhat similar to Donkey, with no real noticeable reference to anything. However, Shrek is still a fantastic movie, albeit one I won't be going to for dragon reference.

Perhaps due to dragons having more significance in the plot of How to Train Your Dragon, a lot more thought was put into the dragons and their movement. Throughout the film we have movements similar to how cats move as well as dogs. However, one part I took interest in especially was the flight. 

Here we can see that the flight is somewhat bat like, with the wing curling inwards as it is brought towards the body and upwards. However, unlike a bat, the wings, on all of the dragons, only flap a few times before stretching out to glide. This kind of flight is seen in another film series, The Hobbit.

Here we can see the dragon Smaug diving before gliding, we can see that coming out of the dive, Smaug only slightly adjusts his wings, compared to really flapping them. 

Here we can see a shot from HBO's Game of Thrones, where the same sort of flying is achieved. Lots of gliding is going on.

One of the earliest films to have 3D dragon animation was Dragonheart, while the dragon animations aren't quite the polish we'd expect nowadays, they are still definitely enjoyable and have their own merit. Yet again, the same idea of a few flaps and gliding is employed however.

Yet again, the same flight style is used in the Harry Potter film series.

And again in the Dragon Prince Netflix series...

And in the Spyro video games...

The video game World of Warcraft cycles between either flapping or gliding with every winged dragon, so is yet again, basically the same method of flight.


We can see from this that it's apparently generally agreed that dragons all fly in this manner. Now, while this does make sense, massive creatures would take a lot of energy to be flapping constantly, it would make sense that they would try to move as much air with as little effort, hence why realistic styled dragons, like Smaug, are stylised to have such large wingspans. Now, while the general movement of wings are very similar across all dragons that I've talked about here, they aren't all the same. A lot of the dragon animations, especially the more realistic and detailed animations, have different ligaments along the wing bending when flapping, as well as having slight adjustments when gliding.

From this research, it seems apparent that along with flapping animations, I will also need to do at least a gliding animation, however if I have time, I would also like to experiment with other animations to see what other flying animations I can create that are unique without looking unnatural.

Animating a Dragon ~ part three ~ animating a bat-like dragon flight cycle.

 Animating a flight cycle

This week, I'm starting the animation of the dragon. Relating to the last post, this will be a bat-like flight cycle.

First, I'll animate the wings, getting them into key poses and then in-betweens. Afterwards I will then animate the head, body and finally tail. The reason for animating it in this order is that all of the motion that the dragon is doing is in the wings, everything else is to support and to power that movement.

Here you can see I animated one wing and then the other, I am quite proud of this wing movement as it feels powerful and well timed, the curling inwards almost grabbing at the air adds a sense of animalistic and feral behaviour.

Here you can see I have animated the head movement as well as the legs, the head movement feels a bit awkward.  

Here I have worked on the head movement more, this makes it more in time with the wings, as well as add momentum to the movement.

Here I have worked on the tail movement, I had difficulty getting the tail movement to work well, and I'm still not completely happy with this movement, however I do feel it makes the movement seem more feral which is something that works quite nicely with a dragon, as well as being something you don't often see with dragon animations.

Now that the tail movement is done, I added additional movement to the torso and shoulders, finishing the animation. I feel that this flying animation, while not entirely bat like, is definitely one that feels natural and that I am proud of.

One thing I tried here was using playblasts instead of gifs, which work well for see a rough render of the animation, however due to not being able to loop, has it's drawbacks, in future WIP posts, I will try to include more of a mix.

Animating a Dragon ~ part two ~ beginning research

 
Due to how much of a case study I would like this to be, I plan to conduct extensive research over the next several weeks.

This week, I shall be focusing on bat flight.

This is one of the creatures I would like to use as inspiration for animation, because while Dragons appear closest to lizards, the bone structure of their wings, especially in the case of the rig I'm using, seem closer to that of a bat than a bird or a flying lizard of anything kind (not that they really exist, more gliding lizards).

The wing movements of bats can be a little too fast to easily see, however slowmotion videos and gifs are very useful in allowing us to see how bats move their wings to fly.

From this we see that generally the tip of the wing is brought behind the shoulder and then down and in front of both the head and shoulder. Looking further into this, we can see that as the wing is bought up, the different bones along the wing, which somewhat resembles hands, are curled inwards but as the front of the wing is rotated downwards, these bones unfurl again.

We can also the body is almost at an 45 degree angle to the head, something that may be worth exploring with the dragon rig.

Another thing of note with this is how the legs are used in this flight, now while with dragon rig does not have any of the wing connected to the legs like how this bat does, I think it would still be an interesting and potentially successful thing to see what the dragon rig looks like with similar leg motion when in flight.

While I am uncertain if I will animate a walk/run animation with this dragon rig due to wanting to focus mainly on the flight, it is still worth analysing how a bat might walk/run in case I find myself having time to animate one for this project. 

Here we can see that a bat perfects a hot, similar to how to a dog might run however due to it's short legs and very long arms, this becomes a hop. Having short legs and very longs arms is something that a lot of dragons also suffer from, so this type of run could be very interesting, especially if adding the additional weight that a dragon would have. This has potential to create quite an intense and scary run with the dragon, however it also has a risk of coming across as "goofy".

Next post, I plan to either animate a "bat-like" flight cycle or to analyse a bird's flight cycle, espiecally a big bird like a Buzzard. 

 

Animating a Dragon ~ part one ~ introduction.

Intro

For module GAM250, I have chosen to animate a dragon. However not just a simple showreel, I would like to delve into the research side a lot more than usual and make this somewhat a "case study".

Over the next couple months, I will be animating a dragon taking inspiration from real life creatures as well as reviewing and analysing cases where dragons have already been animated, such as How to Train Your Dragon and The Hobbit films. 



The Rig

Due to wanting to focus purely on the animation side, I will not be able to rig a dragon of my own, so I shall be using this rig: https://truongcgartist.artstation.com/store/1Vlw/maya-dragon-rig-jaemin-dragon

I have chosen this rig as it has plenty of controllers, along with Set Driven Keys for the wings, allowing for the wings to be furled and unfurled easily. 

Another reason for using this rig was that it has IKFK controllers on it's wings, legs, head/neck and tail, which is another very useful feature.

The rig also features controllers for animating wind in the skin between the bones in the wings.

A big bonus of this rig is that it can be found at the student-friendly price of free! However paying $1 for it is more than worth it as it is a great rig.