CPS Week 8: Character, Environment and Events

Week 8

Response

In response to the theme of Character, Environment and Events, I created a short animation that tells the story of how the bouncing balls affect their environment in Maya. 

By animating the intruder (the purple ball) bounces from a different frequency to the same frequency and same height as the group of bouncing balls, I showed that a character can be assimilated easily. The change of the colour also proved the effect of the environment on a character. When a second intruder comes into the scene, it activates the button on the floor and a platform pops out from the ground. Then, when the button on the sky is pressed, the action changes the whole environment colour into indigo, hence, changing the colour of the bouncing balls as well.

The tools I used to create this piece are the MASH system and Blendshapes in Maya. The MASH system was used to create a group of bouncing balls. I adjusted the value in the Distribution and Random nodes so that the bouncing balls were not placed neatly on the ground. Blenshapes were used to create simple expressions of the intruder (purple ball) and the animation of the white button on the floor as deformers. I then keyframed them to further animate the objects.

Similar work has been produced by Daniel Martínez Lara and Rafa Cano Méndez, whose work ‘Alike’ (https://youtu.be/PDHIyrfMl_U) explores the theme by desaturated the colour of the characters to show that a character has lost its specialties and blended in with the society.