Advanced Animation: Project III - Action Sequence

 MODULE GCD 61604: Advanced Animation 

Tristan Vaughan Sleep - 0365120

Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media

Advanced Animation - Project III: Action Sequence Animation

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MODULE INSTRUCTIONS:

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“SEPT 2025: GCD 61604 / ADVANCED MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET”

Project III: Action Sequence Animation (Weighted 40%)

Final Project: For this module, Students of the cohort are tasked with creating an action sequence animation of using the provided model and their prior experience with the software. The main goal of this exercise is for students to demonstrate their understanding of 3D animation and create an entertaining short scene based on their experiences. The outcome of this exercise is for the students to produce a video/videos of an action scene of their choice which will be recorded in 1280 x 720p at 24fps and should be uploaded to their personal E-portfolio.

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PARTICIPATED LECTURES:

WEEK IX - XIV: Final Animation

Planning sequences + Reference material: For this final project, the students have been instructed to make a lengthy animation demonstrating their understanding of the lessons taught previously in this project to produce a small piece of action. This task proves immediately to be a lot more challenging as We’ve been asked to further experiment with the cinematic side of animation as well such as having a greater focus being applied to both the lighting/layout and the camera within the scene. Before going into the project, it is better to have an understanding of the smaller moments which happen within the scene to see what I need to collect reference for.

In my original idea, the project was supposed to be an action sequence where the main character uses a mixture of kicks and punches to progress across the screen. From here, I followed the advice of the lecturer and referenced this Youtube channel who specialise in creating footage to reference when animating. Expanding upon the advice, the lecturer further requested us to breakdown the videos using Blender built-in video editor - asking us to identify the body shapes, actions and positioning to create a more impactful animation.

“Youtube: Channel - Video Name”

Reference Breakdown: As previously mentioned, the lecturer asked us to collect a series of real-world clips of people performing various actions to help guide us when creating the frames for the animations using blenders internal software. In this, we were expected to look at parts of the videos and use our own understanding to break down the motion so it would be easier to reference in moments. For me, I first started by analysing the gradual changes in the actors motion which would be useful for a frame-by-frame animation approach however, in this context it was rather time consuming. Instead, it was recommended to look at the key-frames within the animation such as the frames with the most action or frames at the start/end of an action. From there, we could create smaller breakdown frames and then render the animation from there.

“Blender - Breakdown Video ”

Combining Clips: In order to make the animation more special, the original idea that I had was to combine multiple videos mentioned previously which makes a more unique attack chain and adds an extra layer of creativity to the final project. Using the video editor, I’ve been able to combine the videos together and can reference them to make the final animation.

Making Improvements: While the original video is great to reference on its own, I wanted to put a little bit of an extras flare on the animation by exaggerating some of the poses and working on adding wind-up and follow-through animations to make the actions feel more impactful. Furthermore, I wanted to add a more neutral fighting pose which is useful in breaking the animation into definable chunks. The next major change I wanted to add was placing ‘enemies’ within the scene to make the animation look better/reactionary rather than the main character just fighting the air. For this, I simply added some floating squares which move to attack the character - defending themselves using the unique combo of moves designed from the videos. The final improvement came when adding the camera to the scene; in some instances I wanted to emphasise the power of a hit or to create a greater action using scaling. In the scene where the character performs an uppercut and the low-leg sweep, both their legs and hands have been lengthened and re-scaled with the intention to add a bit more weight to the swing.

“Blender - Final Video ”

Animation Difficulties: While I would like to believe the project was going well, I’d run into some issues involving the animation style of the video. In essence, the rotation of some rigs was unfortunately inconsistent and would cause the character to ‘bug’ out and begin spinning wildly in place when animating. To trouble shoot this, I’d gone through the animation again and had re-calculated the rotations of the rig as well as trying to minimise certain limb rotations however, this did not completely solve this issue. As a result, I would attempt to complete the animation by using the ‘animate frame-by-frame’ concept by using bezier animation which gets broken down into separate frames which then is cleaned up. This has the unfortunate side-effect of making everything look ‘choppy.’ Being choppy is not a bad thing for animation and can actually be used to give the work a more stylised look however, this should be considered when first starting the animation and should not be a last minute alteration brought upon by a difficult to solve problem.

Regardless of this, I’m satisfied with how the final animation turned out minus the limitations that I’ve had to work with. Overall, I've found a new appreciation for the medium of animation and am greatly looking forward to learning more with it in the future - despite the challenges faced, I did enjoy my time both with this project and the module as a whole. For future reference, it's important that I consider the style and limitations of my animations in the beginning to set myself for the most success when working. When animating, its important to take moments of pause and look back at the work done to see if anything is bugging out in anyway as well as being sure to check if the values for the bones/rigs are progressing in an easier-to-read fashion.