Animating Cartoon Characters in Maya

Teaches simple steps to creating exaggerated cartoon animation in Maya, using principles such as squash and stretch, exaggeration, follow-through, and overlapping action.

Now that you've rigged your characters, it's time to make them move. Starting from where Modeling a Cartoon Character in Maya left off, George Maestri teaches five simple steps to creating exaggerated cartoon animation in Maya. Using the rig developed in the previous course, he shows how to animate a walk, create a jump, animate changes in facial expression and posture, animate a "zip out" or quick exit, and then show how to finalize and render the complete project. Throughout the course, George touches on animation principles such as squash and stretch, exaggeration, follow-through, and overlapping action.

Introduction

• Welcome
• Using the exercise files
• Rig overview
• Scene overview

1. Animating a Cartoon Walk

• Working out the basic timing
• Blocking out footsteps
• Animating the feet and hips
• Adding squash and stretch on the body
• Animating the arms
• Fine-tuning the animation

2. Straight Ahead: Creating a Jump

• Anticipating the jump
• The top pose of the jump
• Making a landing
• Follow-through and settle
• Adding secondary motion

3. Pose to Pose: Animating Changes in Mood

• Using character sets
• Blocking out basic poses
• Timing the basic poses
• Creating facial expressions
• Blinks to add more life
• Adding overlap and follow-through

4. Animating a Zip Out

• Creating the anticipation pose
• Moving within a held pose
• Animating a quick exit

5. Finalizing and Rendering

• Adding lights and background
• Setting up render options
• Finalizing render

Conclusion

• Next steps