Month: February 2026

This week focused on eye animation and the role that blinks, eye darts and eyebrow movements play in creating natural facial performances. Ting explained that blinks should not be added randomly, but should serve a purpose, often accompanying changes in thought, attitude or direction. She also demonstrated how eye darts can make a character feel alive and emphasized the idea that thoughts lead the eyes and the eyes lead the body. After the lecture, she gave a short demonstration of her own workflow for animating eyes in Maya. I really enjoyed seeing this because it is easy to focus on principles in isolation, but watching an experienced animator actually apply them gave me a better understanding of the process and the order in which she tackles different parts of the face.

Our assignment this week was to connect the three facial poses we had created previously. At first I thought this would be similar to pose-to-pose body animation, but I quickly realised that facial animation has very different timing requirements. Expressions often change quickly and snappily, and the challenge was less about creating movement and more about figuring out when that movement should happen. I spent a lot of time experimenting with eye darts and blinks, trying to avoid making the transitions feel robotic. It was also interesting to think about which parts of the face should lead and which parts should follow. Although I found the process frustrating at times, it made me appreciate how much subtlety goes into facial animation and how much information can be communicated through very small changes.

I also revisited my “Heavy Object / Change of Mind” shot for another pass. Based on Ting’s feedback, I focused on improving the weight and paying more attention to the shape of the back when the character bent down to pick up the ball. However, I began to feel the effects of doing too many passes on the same shot. After making so many adjustments, I found myself becoming lost in the keys and struggling to remember the intention behind certain poses. Instead of making clear improvements, I was sometimes creating new problems while trying to fix old ones. This experience made me realise that there is a point where repeatedly tweaking an animation can become counterproductive.

Looking back, this week taught me an important lesson about iteration. While it is important to keep refining a shot, there is also value in knowing when to step back and simplify. Seeing Ting’s workflow reminded me that animation is often about making deliberate choices rather than endlessly adjusting every controller. I am beginning to understand that reference, planning and clarity are just as important as technical skill, and that sometimes taking a break from a shot can help reveal problems more clearly than another pass ever could.

This week Ting introduced Project 1, which she described as a test run for the Final Major Project rather than a complete proposal. The idea was to focus on one element that we wanted to explore and develop it into a polished outcome. She showed several examples of how previous students had approached the project, whether through developing a visual style, testing a workflow or planning their portfolio. I found this reassuring because it removed the pressure of having to know exactly what my FMP would look like and instead encouraged experimentation and focused research. Since I had already been thinking about my FMP, I immediately began considering how I could present my ideas and what aspect would be most interesting to explore further.

We also continued working on facial poses, but this time using live reference instead of model sheets. I found this considerably more challenging than the previous assignment. The model sheet expressions were already stylized and exaggerated, making them easier to interpret, whereas real facial expressions are much more subtle and complex. Often I found myself struggling to identify what exactly made an expression work. Small changes around the mouth, eyelids or eyebrows could dramatically alter the feeling of a pose. Although I struggled initially, the process forced me to become more observant and taught me that facial animation is less about copying individual features and more about understanding the relationships between them. By the end of the exercise, I felt more comfortable analyzing expressions and translating them into appealing poses.

I also continued refining my “Heavy Object / Change of Mind” shot. Taking Ting’s feedback into account, I focused on improving the movement of the centre of gravity. One issue she repeatedly pointed out was that my COG would occasionally stop moving entirely, making the character feel stiff and disconnected from the action. At first, the idea that the COG should almost always be in motion was difficult for me to understand. I had a tendency to treat poses as isolated moments rather than parts of a continuous action. To improve this, I spent time studying reference footage and adjusting my blocking to ensure that the weight flowed naturally from one pose to the next. Although it was frustrating at times, I gradually started to understand how even subtle shifts in the hips can make a character feel more alive and believable.

Looking back, I noticed that many of the topics we have covered over the past few weeks are beginning to connect. Whether it is camera movement, facial posing or body mechanics, the common theme seems to be that animation is less about moving controls and more about observing life. The more I rely on reference and think about why people move the way they do, the easier it becomes to make creative decisions rather than guessing. I feel like I am slowly becoming more patient with the process and spending more time planning and analysing before jumping into animation.

This week’s lecture focused on facial posing and what makes expressions feel appealing and organic. Ting emphasized concepts such as asymmetry, shape, connectivity and maintaining volume, explaining that perfect symmetry often makes faces feel robotic and lifeless. One idea that stood out to me was that expressions should not be created by simply maxing out controls, but by thinking about how muscles influence one another and how the whole face works as a connected system. We also looked at how subtle changes in eyelids, eyebrows and mouth shapes can dramatically change the emotion being communicated.

After the lecture, Ting assigned us the task of recreating facial poses from a model sheet. Although this reminded me of the golden poses exercise from first term, I found facial posing considerably more difficult. With body poses, large silhouettes and lines of action often make the difference, whereas with facial animation the smallest adjustment to a single controller can completely change the appeal of a pose. Initially, many of my expressions looked awkward or too symmetrical, but after spending more time experimenting and referring back to the lecture notes, I gradually started to understand how to create more organic poses. The experience taught me that facial animation requires a much higher level of observation and subtlety than I had expected.

I also received feedback on my planning for the “Heavy Object / Change of Mind” assignment. Ting suggested that instead of relying on online reference, I should record myself performing the action. She explained that having my own footage would make it easier to analyse camera angles and understand the mechanics of the movement. Keeping this advice in mind, I spent the week blocking the shot and focused mainly on establishing strong key poses and believable weight shifts. Rather than worrying about polish, I concentrated on communicating effort and making sure the object actually felt heavy. This stage made me appreciate how much of animation is solved through posing rather than through adding lots of movement.

On Friday, we had a practical exercise based on the self-study videos from the previous week. Using Stitch, we had to animate the process of making a cup of tea. Although the animation itself was fairly simple, the real purpose of the exercise was to test our understanding of parenting and hierarchy. Stitch had to pick up a tea bag, place it into the kettle, carry the kettle and pour water into a cup, meaning that control relationships were constantly changing throughout the sequence. I initially found this task frustrating because, as I have mentioned before, Maya’s workflow still feels much less intuitive to me than Blender. However, once I stopped trying to solve problems as they appeared and instead planned the hierarchy and parent switches beforehand, everything became much easier. This exercise reinforced something I am beginning to notice repeatedly in animation: good planning often saves far more time than trying to fix problems later.

This week’s lecture expanded on story structure and introduced several different narrative frameworks, including the Three-Act Structure, the Hero’s Journey, Dan Harmon’s Story Circle, the Five-Act Structure and Kishōtenketsu. Ting also discussed the hierarchy of narrative, explaining how individual shots and scenes contribute to larger sequences and ultimately the story as a whole. What I found most interesting was seeing how these different structures all attempt to describe the same thing: how characters change over time. Although each framework approaches storytelling differently, they all emphasize that stories are built around transformation rather than simply events happening one after another.

After the lecture, we received feedback on our “Hunter to Prey” assignment. Ting understood the story we were trying to tell and generally liked the piece, but she gave us several suggestions to improve it. She felt some shots were cutting too quickly, preventing the audience from fully digesting the information. She also pointed out that many of our camera moves felt too linear and mechanical. Rather than moving at a constant speed, she encouraged us to introduce slow-ins and slow-outs and, more importantly, to think of the camera as a character. Instead of being a passive observer, the camera should react to the events happening within the scene and communicate emotion through its movement. This feedback changed the way I thought about cinematography. Previously, I had viewed camera movement as something functional, but Ting made me realize that it can be expressive and have its own personality. Throughout the week, we revisited the animation with these notes in mind and made adjustments to improve the pacing and staging.

Alongside the project, we also had a self-study component focused on constraints in Maya. I really enjoyed working through these videos because, as someone who primarily uses Blender, I still find Maya’s interface and workflow confusing at times. Learning about constraints and parenting helped demystify some of the software and made me feel more comfortable navigating it. Although these are relatively basic concepts, they felt like important building blocks that would save time in future assignments. It was reassuring to discover that many of the concepts I already understood in Blender existed in Maya as well, even if they were implemented differently.

Towards the end of the week, Ting introduced the next assignment, “Heavy Object / Change of Mind”. The goal was to use acting and body mechanics to portray a character unsuccessfully interacting with a heavy object before ultimately deciding on a different course of action. This week was mainly dedicated to planning, so I spent some time thinking about possible scenarios and gathering reference material. Rather than immediately animating, I focused on understanding the weight shifts and physical effort involved in lifting heavy objects. I also began collecting video references that could help with posing and timing. Having learned from the previous assignments, I wanted to spend more time preparing and observing before committing to animation, since good acting and believable movement often come from careful planning rather than trying to solve everything inside Maya.