CS527 Computer Animation Project 1 - Walking Little Green Man
To start this project, my idea of
60-seconds animation comes from the observation of the difference
pedestrain
traffic sign between that in Taiwan and in the states. The normal
traffic one could on the streets in the states normally looks like the
following picture
When pedestrains are not allowed to pass, a bid red pawn will show (or
flash) in the upper sign. And when pedestrains are allowed to pass, a
static small person walking-like symbol will be displayed.
In Taiwan, we have an animated "little green man", instead of living
outer space, he lived inside the traffic sign. When the pedestrain need
stop, the upper box will display a static standing red person. When
pedestrain are allowed to pass, the lower box will display an animated
"little green man" walking. And as the time (seconds) getting less and
less for pedestrain, the little green will be walking faster and
faster! As if he wants to tell you to hurry up.
(courtesy of Daniel
Sun @ Flickr)
You can find live movie clip from here and here.
And more
information about "little green man" here.
So the basic story of the animation goes like this:
1. In a corner of traffic intersection, the cars(robin birds in this
case) are passing by. (Camera paning from the top)
2. (Camera focus to the traffic sign), The traffic sign for pedestrain
just turn to green walking state from big red stop pawn sign.
3. (Camera focus to littlte green man), the little green man
starts his days routine job, keep walking and walking. From initial
slow mode to faster and faster pacing mode.
4. After so much fast walking, he starts panting.
5. He looks up looking for companian, but the one in the upper traffic
sign box couldn't give him any response. Little green feels sad and
down.
6. All in the sudden, the world seems shaking and lights are down.
(City-hall wokers are replacing the traffic sign! ;-) )
7. Little green man is back from shaking, he shakes his head trying to
find what's going on.
8. Looking up, he found he've got a new companion! There will be new
red lady working with him from now on!
9. He felt that he might be in love.
Having the basic idea, I went through the Anim8tor tutorial, made the
eggplant and robin bird model. Learned how to build objects, figures,
and animated sequences. So I built the cross section scene with one
traffic sign (bear with me, that's where most of the things happen).
There are totally 3 figures I made, 1. the "robin bird" walking figure
(following the tutorial). I used it as a car moving on the road. 2.
"The little green man", who does most the "acting", walking, panting,
looking around, disappointed etc. 3. "Little red lady", showing
friendness to "little green man" at the end of animation. Making the
"growing/shrinking" hand in the beginning uses Anim8tor's morphing
capabilities.
Few screenshots below
Download un-postproduction version from here.
Download posted with iMovie here. Apple Quicktime Player required.
Anim8tor project file here.
Q & A
Darshan Bhatt: How did you speed up the walking sequence without changing te sequence? And was this more efficient than multiple copies with fewer frame?
Answer: It is done with multiple copies of a walking cycle composing a longer sequence. You can do it in 2 ways. You can either 1. have a "slower copy"(with more empty inter-frames), copy & append it multiple times and delete those frames in sequence segments that you want it faster. Or 2. You can copy keyframes to different frames. The first method obvious works easier in practical.
2006 Fall by Julian Yu-Chung Chen
