Rationale

For my Animation project I decided on choosing a chair for my character. I wanted my chair character to be a school chair. Because of this he is grumpy from being mistreated from children and is easily aggravated. His anger is shown when the ball comes out of nowhere and hits his on the “head”. He instantly stops and his very angry. He shows his anger by kicking the ball away and then walking away himself. However he doesn’t know that the ball is following him in an attempt to play with him.

I feel my animation was successful in portraying the chairs character and had a good use of the 12 principles of animation. The best principle used was the squash and stretch of the ball while it bounced. 

I used four legged animals as a reference for the movement of his legs. I originally found this hard to achieve as with most four legged animals, their back legs bend in the opposite direction but I adjusted the movements to fit my character and its rigging system.

I chose having a white background and very strong shadows to communicate the chairs mood. He is very straight forward with his moods and feelings (black and white). He is easily made angry and this is shown through the dark shadows and backgrounds.

Final Animation

Test Playblast

Test Walk:
Testing the camera movements, timing and walking of the chair.

Changes in Animation

• Walking on the spot sequence
• Walking along then hit with a ball
• Reaction to being hit with a ball (shakes head in anger)
• Turns to the ball
• Jumps and kicks the ball away
• Starts walking away from the ball
• The ball bounces after the chair
• Finish

Test Playblast

Jumping and kicking the ball test:

UV Mapping

4x Movement Sketches

Movement: Walking

 Props: Kicking the ball

 Gravity: Crouching and jumping up to kick the ball

 Velocity: Running and walking

Chair Movement

Researching Movement

I researched human and animal movements to see how to rig and animate my character. I will be referring to these a lot while I animate because they are so helpful.

I started looking at human movement but it was hard to apply it to a creature with four legs. I couldn't figure out how four legs moved together.

Human Movement

Animal Movement

I looked into dog and cat movements and found this fitted more with my chair.

I found the last image of the dog movements the most helpful because it showed a range of velocity movements. 
This video is incredibly helpful also.

Weighing him down

I was taught how to weigh the model and completed this quickly. I struggled a bit with the weighing of the front legs but I fixed it in the end.

Finished Rigging the Chair

Finally finished rigging! 

Rigging the Chair

 Trying to figure out how to rig my character is difficult because I'm not hugely sure how I want him to move or what I want him to do. I want him to have a knee joints instead of walking with rigid legs. This will give the character more freedom for more different actions. I want him to be able to turn his "back" and be able to bend over to sigh. 

I am still figuring this out at the moment. I will research it further and look up tutorials.

The Story

The Original Story:

• Chair minding his own business while walking
• Ball comes out of nowhere and hits the chair in the "head"
• Ball falls to the ground
• Chair gets angry
• Looks around to see if anyone is around
• Kicks ball away, angrily
• Running to catch up with the ball to kick it again
• Chair slows down because it is tired
• Jumps up and down with anger
• Pauses again to catch his breath

Edited Story:

• Chair minding his own business while walking
• Ball comes out of nowhere and hits the chair in the "head"
• Ball falls to the ground
• Chair pauses and tries to remain calm
• Suddenly turns to the ball
• Ball bounces playfully away
• Deep sigh from the chair
• Starts shaking with anger
• Starts running after ball
• Catches up to the ball
• Chair kicks the ball away
• Turns around and starts to walk away
• Ball starts following the chair without the chair knowing

Modelling the Chair

Characters Traits

Primary school chair

• Worn out
• Fed up
• Short temper
• Maybe with a slight limp from being battered around by children/Wobbly
• Rough
• Scratches 
• Interaction with the ball would be either a "can't be bothered" vibe or so fed up that he'll kick it away, or be angry with it. I can imagine the ball being thrown at the character and hitting him unexpectedly

Character Concepts

 Playing around with different personalities 

Final chosen inanimate object: Chair

An older, pompous chair. Intimidating

A preschooler's chair, playful, excited, messy

A chair based on a scorpion type form, pounces, sneaky

Primary school chair, tired, mistreated,

Primary school chair -different style

Researching the Objects: Visuals

Lamp

Vacuum Cleaner






Clock

Unicycle

Toaster:

Chair:

Espresso Machine:
 
Dial Telephone: