Anastasiya Pusiankova | ROOKIES 2024

           COMBAT ANIMATION

                                                               rig by UE5 and anim_matt

This is the latest project I created at Breda University of Applied Sciences in my 3rd year. The constraints for the task were: medieval and realistic.

The "medieval" theme for the animation seemed like quite a bizarre constraint, but it was fairly easy for me to choose combat as the focus of my animation. I wanted to challenge myself with this one and animate 2 characters interacting. On top of that, I had never worked on an animation that involved such a complex use of props, so that was another challenge I faced.

The hardest and most exciting part of this project was the idea of combining mocap and hand-key animations. After shooting the data for the mocap character (red), I used Motion Builder to work on the animation. After that, I added the mocap into Maya and worked on implementing both animations.

Of course, the process wasn't without some issues, such as the scale problem I had with the mocap ,which is why I had to cheat a bit with the props interaction. Instead of using one axe throughout the whole animation, I had two meshes for the axe. After the hand-key character (blue) takes the axe from the mocap character (red), I hide the mocap axe and unhide the hand-key one.

This method would not work very well for the game project, but since I was using it as an animated shot, it worked for me.

Mocap data before and after cleanup. I got lucky that my mocap data looked pretty good right away. However, the timing was pretty off compared to the hand-key animation and the reference, so I had to speed up and slow down certain parts.

                         WARTHOG

                                                                   rig by Truong CG Artist

The creature animation I completed as an assignment at the beginning of this academic year. I chose a warthog because they're quite fun and entertaining. They move in a very silly way, and I loved researching their behavior!

At first, I wanted to limit the animation to a simple walk-cycle. However, since I don't get to animate creatures that often, I wanted to have more than just a single shot. So I decided to reuse the walk cycle at the beginning of another animation and add a little personality to the end. 

This is the shot that came out of it.

I struggled a lot with the tail. In nature, the warthog's tail doesn't seem to follow the movement of the rest of the body, but rather just goes in every direction with the wind. This, however, wasn't an option for the animation as it seemed unpolished and unrealistic.

                            "DUDE"

                                                                  rig by Ahmed Shalaby

This was my very first attempt at trying out acting and lip sync. Although my studies are focused on game animations, I've always wanted to pursue a career in the feature animation industry. This shot was my starting point, and I'm looking forward to trying more animations targeting acting. 

                           KUNG FU

                                                                         rig by Rigstation

The last piece I'd like to present is this body mechanics animation. It's the oldest of the four shots and I went back to it not so long ago to fix some bits. The whole animation was over 20 seconds long, but I cut it into these two pieces because I wanted to polish them a bit more. 

This is the full animation. It consists of a few acrobatic online references as well as my acting at the start and end.