CAGD 493 Week 15 FinalReflection - Christopher Coombs

     Hello everyone! My name is Christopher Coombs, and we have reached the end of the Fall 2025  semester. This final blog will serve as a reflection of all my progress up until this point. Here is the demo reel that I've prepared showing all five animations I've worked on this year:

    At the start of the semester, my initial goal was to study the movement of quadrupeds and get good at animating them. The quadruped I decided to start with was a leopard, as shown in the first three animations of my demo reel. Although it took a considerable amount of time and effort to learn the fundamental mechanics of how quadrupeds move, I couldn't have figured it out without the feedback I received from the professor and my classmates. While studying the reference footage I had gathered online, this feedback became crucial in identifying the most significant traits in how quadrupeds generally move. In a quadrupedal walk cycle, the front and back legs can be imagined as two bipedal walk cycles offset from each other to maintain balance. I managed to accomplish this in my very first quadruped animation, the leopard walk cycle. When I was working on my leopard's run cycle, I was taught to imagine its body like an accordion. This helped significantly in adding natural squash and stretch to the animation. 

    My third animation of the leopard waking up and stretching was by far the roughest animation in my demo reel. However, I had learned a very valuable lesson from the professor. Rather than focusing on keying individual parts of the animation, I should always try to key my poses in full. That way, it doesn't feel like a set of falling dominoes, with one part moving after the other. When reanimating the leopard for the third animation, I tried my best to implement this rule, though it still appears stiff in a few areas. Later in the year, I learned from one of our guest speakers that the front of quadrupeds can be imagined as the steering wheel of a car. Where the front turns, the back will follow. This would likely have helped improve the third animation just a bit more.

    Ideally, after this point, I would have continued animating quadrupeds, as I had found a variety of unique animal rigs to choose from online. Suddenly, the idea of animating something larger and inorganic had popped into my head, and my preplanned schedule immediately flew out the window. When animating, I tend to jump on whatever catches my interest at the time, so adhering to a set schedule has always been quite tricky for me. For my fourth animation, you can see from the demo reel that I chose to work with an AT-ST from Star Wars. It was a simple walk cycle, but the real goal of this animation was to experiment with large, heavyweight characters. I managed to accomplish this by emphasizing the forceful stomps of every step and giving a little  shake to the legs upon impact. Adding a slight bounce to the AT-ST's main gun added further power to every step. Since the eye panels and the toes were the lightest parts of the machine, I gave them a bit of drag to sell the force of the core body's movements.

    For the fifth and final animation in the demo reel, I wanted to explore the concept of weight between characters. Therefore, I animated a short interaction between WALL-E and the AT-ST from the previous project. I believe I was quite successful in emphasizing the impact of certain motions. For when the AT-ST slowly turns around, I gave the camera a slight shake with every stomp to make it feel as if the earth were shaking. I used a similar effect to sell the impact of Wall-E crashing into the AT-ST's leg at the beginning. The AT-ST's legs were also given a more noticable shake to further convey its power. WALL-E, in turn, would get popcorned into the air. I took the distance of the steps into account, lessening WALL-E's jump from the further away stomp. In this latest version, I focused on giving life to some of the more static areas of the animation, especially in the head and arms. The timing for WALL-E's getaway is also much faster than it once was, and I added a lot more sway to the body and arms. Unfortunately, the semester has come to an end, yet I feel that this animation is not yet complete. There are a few areas I can improve to make the animation feel more fluent. I've also yet to implement the crash camera, but it's definitely near the top of the list for things I'd like to complete, perhaps over the break.

    Overall, my greatest accomplishment this semester was leaving my comfort zone. Not only did I challenge myself with a variety of unique character rigs, but I also experimented with animation concepts I was entirely unfamiliar with. Sure, not all of my animations turned out as perfect as I wanted them to, but I didn't let it stop me from animating new things. Of course, the end of the semester doesn't mean that my goals just simply disappear. I still have an extensive catalog of animal rigs to work with, and I'm not letting that opportunity go to waste during the break period. There really is no contest, Senior Portfolio was the best class I've taken in my school career. The work I've put into this class reflects exactly what I'll be doing when searching for a job, so the experience has been invaluable. To my classmates, it's been a blast working together and sharing our animations with each other. Most of us will likely cross paths again in the future. As for Mark, our professor, thank you for getting me started on this adventure. Animation has never felt more fun, but I'll gladly stand to be corrected as I continue to build my skills with every passing year.

    That's all there is! Thanks to those who have been reading my posts this semester. I hope all of you have a wonderful Christmas Break!

                                                                                                                      - Christopher Coombs