Rhia Crouch's Blog

I found that doing 2D styled, and sometimes 3D styled, animation was a great way of learning the very basics of animation but I found that I wasn't able to keep up with the work. I found myself spending too much time trying to work out how something should move and were everything such be in each frame. I did understand the lessons and it has made me more aware of the things that I need to being looking out for, such as the 12 principles of animation, when I'm working in Maya. Animation Showreel from Rhia Crouch on Vimeo .

I found life drawing a lot of fun as it gave me a chance to get away from the computer screen and relax. I have done life drawing before so I knew some of the things I had to look out for such as shading and body proportions but this time I didn’t have to spend time trying to get everything right as we were allowed to draw more freely. There were times when I felt that what I was doing wasn’t working or didn’t feel right but this might have come from the fact that in the past I had to make sure that my drawings were in proportion or followed certain art direction, so the fact that I was allowed to draw freely might have thrown me off a little and made me scared to try new things. When I got used to working more freely I found myself trying out new things such as drawing in pen and paint along with adding in the background so that the figure was not left floating on the white page. I have learnt a lot by doing life drawing each week and it has reminded me that sometimes it is best

Life Drawing Portfolio by Rhia Crouch on Scribd

For my animation, I tried to create an animation that would explain the cell cycle in such a way that it would be easy of the viewer to understand the basic information and not have to go through unnecessary text to find what they are looking for. I tried to push myself a bit more with this project as it was the last one of the year and I used all of the feedback that I was given form my other projects to help me not make the same mistake again or to think again about something when I was planning everything out. This meant focusing on my influence maps more, working on what the overall feel to the world would be and thinking about the audio and how it would add to the animation. I have found that I can model in Maya a bit better and finding little tricks to help me create what I needed to make my animation. Animating everything was a bit of a struggle as I felt I was making everything move too slow or too quick but I quickly got round this by moving the key frames and turning off

Fantastic Voyage - Art Of by Rhia Crouch on Scribd

Fantastic Voyage - The Cell Cycle from Rhia Crouch on Vimeo .

Test Render from Rhia Crouch on Vimeo . It's all coming together.

Fantastic Voyage - Per-viz from Rhia Crouch on Vimeo . I will go back and clean up the animation for the final renders.

Blend Shape Animation 2 from Rhia Crouch on Vimeo .