CHARACTER CREATION

SKELETON FOUNDATION
 SKELETAL ANIMATION
IS A TECHNIQUE IN COMPUTER ANIMATION IN
WHICH A CHARACTER (OR OTHER ARTICULATED
OBJECT) IS REPRESENTED IN TWO PARTS: A
SURFACE REPRESENTATION USED TO DRAW THE
CHARACTER (CALLED SKIN OR MESH) AND A
HIERARCHICAL SET OF INTERCONNECTED BONES
(CALLED THE SKELETON OR RIG) USED TO ANIMATE
(POSE AND KEYFRAME) THE MESH
Skeletal animation or bone-based animation
is a technique in computer animation in
which the object being animated has two
main components: a surface representation
used to draw the object (skin, mesh,
character) and set of interconnected bones
used to animate the surface (skeleton, rig,
set of bones).
Skeletal animation is a form of conceptual
animation design wherein two individual
parts are coordinated: the first one is a skin
or surface model, which shows the
presentation of a character, and the second
one is a set of bones or "skeleton," which is
used to drive commands for animation.
Skeletal animation is based on building a simple skeleton
that can fit the important parts of your animated object.
Defining a skeleton for your character is basically the first
step in the skeletal animation process.

Image 1. shows how a possible skeleton can be identified

in a such manner that can control the most important parts
of your object.
The skeleton is the most important object in a
skeletal animation system. A skeleton is a set of
bones that can be hierarchical organized. Usually an
object has some important joints (vertexes). For
instance, for a character the most important joints
are the hip, the knee, the neck, etc. A bone
connects two already defined joints and this can be
viewed in
A very important step is how bones are connected
between them. A very used method is connecting
them as a hierarchy. This means that a bone
belongs to a parent, and each bone can have a
child as per Image 3.
 The benefit of the hierarchical structure is that you can take
advantage of several controlling techniques such as forward
kinematics, inverse kinematics, dynamical simulation,
canned animation and more. These techniques are
successfully used when
Forward kinematics complex
refers natural
to the use of the movements are of a
kinematic equations
wanted.
robot to compute the position of the end-effector from specified values
for the joint parameters.
Inverse kinematics is the mathematical process of recovering the
movements of an object in the world from some other data, such as a film
of those movements, or a film of the world as seen by a camera which is
itself making those movements. This is useful in robotics and in film
animation.simulation, in computational physics, is the simulation of systems
Dynamical
of objects that are free to move, usually in three dimensions according to
Newton's laws of dynamics, or approximations thereof. Dynamical simulation
is used in computer animation to assist animators to produce realistic
motion, in industrial design (for example to simulate crashes as an early step
in crash testing), and in video games.
 Rigging
Once a skeleton is defined the rigging step comes in. Is
recommended to place the bones exactly where they would be
in a real world skeleton. Each defined bone must be attached
to its belonging part of the object being animated. In this way
the bones control the final movements.

mage 4. A skeleton is rigged

the object being animated
Keyframes

A key frame in animation is a drawing that

defines the starting and ending points of a
smooth transition . A sequence of key frames
defines a sequence of movements the viewer
will see in the final animation. In order to have
a smooth transition between key frames other
inbetween ones are inserted.
Image 5. Walking animation cycle
keyframes
Output
Once the key frames are setup and the animation looks
good when playing in loop you are ready to use it
anywhere your want.
Images 6. & 7. show two different output formats for an
animation: GIF and Sprite Sheet. Of course, an animation
can be output into various formats and this will be covered
into a future post.
Pro and Cons

Advantages / Benefits
Simple animation system using a skeleton to animate
objects is easy to use and very intuitive
Easy to create natural movements inverse kinematics
helps you create complex natural movements
Save time by defining only the main keyframes you save a
lot of time while animating
Disadvantages / Limitations
Bone rigidity bones cannot be moved
relative to each other
Single parent restriction a bone can have
only one parent, so meshes of bones cannot
be created
Hierarchical structure of the skeleton not
suitable for animating liquids or gasses due
its complexity
 Activity:
A. Draw a stick figure of the following character
poses in a 1 whole bond paper.

2. Mavis
1. Mickey
Mouse
B. Scale on it!
use a stickman to draw the appropriate
figure based on the suggested labels inside
each box.
Basic Walking Run for your life!
sitting Lean on wall Just Broke up
 To skilled you up!
Lets have an activity
Assignment : Short bond paper (3 scene each)

Using skeletal animation technique build a character with

an appropriate figure based on the following scene/act

1.Fight scene
2.Court me
3. Sneaky
4.Feeling exhausted!
5.Walk like a boss
6.Barking dog