Project 2: Research

I haven't been able to find much results but I did manage to come across several tips which helps me quicken the speed in which I do my animations.

One tutorial in particular suggests to its readers to keyframe the "start point" and "end point" of an animation. This means that, for example, a ball is supposed to bounce from Point A and Point B, keyframe its starting position and its final position. Once that is done, I can then add in other details in between, such as squash and stretch or bouncing keyframes, with a degree of accuracy better than putting in each keyframe one by one. It also helps in situation where you want one of the model's translate values to be the same at the start and end of the animation but will change in between.

Another tutorial suggests to its readers to avoid making their animations appear stiff, unless the animation involve non-emotional or non-sentient beings. This is to add in some life into the animation and avoid making it appear boring and fake. This is done by making the model fidget or shake in instances where it isn't supposed to move. This can be applied into my robot arm animation; when the arm is supposed to remain still, such as when the magnet is observing the red box, I will make the arm move slightly. Despite being a non-emotional robot, the robot arm is meant to be sentient.

Both tutorials can be combined for effective use. This can be done in one way: When the robot arm is supposed to remain still, I will keyframe the start and end frame of its idleness and add in slight fidget animations in between. This has helped made my robot arm appear more alive and human-like.