Ident 1 - Animation

And so the animation begins! The components are assembled and all ready. Time to get comfortable, put on some good music and press on!

This is where it started! A shiny button in place; with DiscoverBot several feet from it. The first challenge might appear to be the hardest... to make DiscoverBot walk! In actuality, it wasn't. It took a few attempts, but I soon perfected a nifty walking system. In the first few attempts; I pretty much went into it blindly and hoped for the best. Naturally; things didn't really work out. We had DiscoverBot slowing some steps, leaping on others and generally dancing his way up to the button... only this is the sort of dancing you see 40 year olds doing at weddings. Yeah, you know the one I'm on about. In the end; I figured that walking is a very repetitive motion. Therefore; animating the walk in a very structured way would fix the problem... here's how I did it...

The first step was to move DiscoverBot forwards. Get the feet moving and have him moving towards the button. Arms and others small movements like head or torso can wait. I broke the walk cycle into 2 stages; which would occur at set frame intervals. Working from the basic standing pose; I pushed the front leg forwards, and pushed DiscoverBot's torso forwards aswell. Luckily; the IK solvers cut a lot of time out of this. Moving the torso would bend the legs and knees to fit, which really helped make the movement natural! After pushing the torso forward; the back leg was also pulled slightly. The stance was basically where the legs are furthest apart; the front leg is just about to touch the ground; and the back foot is just starting to come off of it. The body is in the centre; balanced between the 2 legs. This was set after 10 frames. (See below)

The next stage was what I called the "Flamingo" stance. It's when you've placed the front foot down; and as you put weight on it; you move your torso forward to put weight over it, and bring your back foot forwards. I catch the moment where the ankles are roughly along the same vertical line (And it looks as if they're standing on one leg like a flamingo; only leaning forward a little bit more). This was set at the next 10 frame interval. (See below)

And that was all there was to it! Every 10 frames I'd set DiscoverBot into the next of these 2 stances... and the rest would sort itself. And sure enough; I soon had DiscoverBot standing next to the button. It was then a case of going back and making the walk a lot more realistic. The next step was to add the 'bobbing' of the torso. This was nice and easy; as the 2 stages solved the problem for me already. At stance 1; where the legs were furthest from eachother, the torso would drop slightly, and that's exactly what I did! Pushed it down just a little bit. At the second stance; where the leg is 'propping' up the body; I then pulled the torso up slightly. Repeat for each 10 frame segment and smile. Just to really make it stylish; I also pushed the torso left and right slightly; depending on where DiscoverBot was placing his weight. Suddenly; I had a natural-looking walk going! Result! All that was left to do was swing the hands. Again; with the 10-frame system set-up, this was also a cake-walk. Stance 1 would have the hands at the furthest distance apart from eahcother; whilst Stance 2 would have them at the same level (Both roughly just above the "knees" if DiscoverBot had them). Once again; repeat for each of the 10 frames and it worked beautifully. So that was the walk taken care of.

Next step was tapping the button for the first time. This was an easy bit; as it was mostly manipulating the hand and fingers (Which, in practice; were just 5 spheres altogether!) However, there were a lot more smaller pieces of animation to this. As I started this bit; I realised that it was the small details that made the big impressions. Anyone shown how to animate in 3DS Max could push a button. But the thing I found was that just lifting the hand and pressing the button had a very amateurish look about it. It looked like a very stale animation made by someone who just couldn't care less. Something was missing. So I stood up and acted it out. How did I move? How would I push an unusual button? The thing noticed was that most movements, even small ones, pretty much involve the entire body. When pushing a button; the head tilted slightly and the body dropped. So I worked that into it. Suddenly; the animation had a lore more life. It looked a look more realistic. This then became the crux of most of the animations for the idents. Detail, detail, subtle detail. Always act out what I would do and impose the small, subtle movements onto the animation as well.

And so DiscoverBot's hand flies off (Look in the distance of the right panel, you can see it!). This bit was fun. Adding the shock and the sense of "!?" in DiscoverBot was very enjoyable. Once more; a few actings of it and subtle movements helped create a very natural-looking and humorous shock. That was an additional difficulty in the creation; I wanted it to be funny! And as DiscoverBot cannot speak; the humour was purely in the subtle movements and animaitons... no pressure eh!

This was perhaps the weakest bit of the ident, in my opinion... making DiscoverBot fly off. It took a few attempts, but nothing quite worked. This one's sufficient but not what I would have wanted it to be (I really wanted to have DB get tugged; try and sprint away from the magnet and then get pulled and flipped over)

And here he is; stick to the magnet. Instead of trying to wriggle free; it seemed better for him to 'check everything was there', so he wiggled his fingers and toes, looking at each one... only to suddenly look shocked... what on earth is tha-!?

*SMACK!* Cue a metal sheet with Discovery Channel flying onto the magnet. "But what about the Space Station!?" I hear you cry. In the end; it became too much effort for something so minor. To make matters worse; it wasn't even instantly obvious that the electromagnet caused the station to crash! This became even more annoying when I started to add sounds to it; as finding a noise of something falling from the sky... only to crash AND have the metal debris sounds for several seconds after... was insanely difficult. In the end; it was better to scrap the station and have the metal sign stick onto the electromagnet (This was a lot more obvious). Turned out to be funnier too! Finish with DiscoverBot wriggling the get free... and we have a finished ident! One down!

Easter Egg time! As a little gift; here's some clips from the old animaiton where the Space Station would come crashing down. It seemed a waste to go through all the effort and not at least present what would previously happen! Simply put; the Space Station was given the reactor tool; and allowed to fall and crash off its own accord (This would look a lot more realistic than trying to crash it myself). As I built this animaiton into the scene; I then started to send DiscoverBot and the electromagnet off flying (Due to the shock of the impact)

The dust settles and everything starts to fall into little heaps and settle.

The ident originally finished off with a charred Discovery Channel sign falling to the floor; with DiscoverBot poking his head up at the end. This was scarpped in the end.