Month: June 2026

This week, Ting talked to us about professional practice and career development. Besides animation skills, she also explained how to collaborate with colleagues, communicate clearly, and stay professional in a real project environment.

In class, Ting mentioned that when we face a problem in a project, we should not immediately pass it to someone else. We should first try to solve it ourselves, such as reopening Maya, rebooting the machine, or looking for documentation and tutorials. If the problem still cannot be solved, we can then ask close classmates, colleagues, or more experienced people. For technical problems, we can ask the lead, TD, or group chat. If the issue is more important or related to decision-making, then we can ask the supervisor.

I found this lesson very useful because communication directly affects teamwork and efficiency. When asking a question, we should clearly explain what problem we have, what we were doing, what we have already tried, and what we think the possible reason might be. This makes the question more professional and easier for others to understand.

This class made me realise that becoming an animator is not only about making good animation. It is also important to work well in a team, stay polite, solve problems actively, and communicate in a clear and professional way.

This week, Ting introduced us to Studio Library. It is a useful plugin for Maya animation, mainly used to save and manage character poses and animation clips. It works like an animation library, allowing us to store useful poses, facial expressions, or movement sections and reuse them later. Compared with adjusting the controllers again every time, Studio Library can make the animation workflow more efficient and help us manage different versions of movement.

In class, we also continued the Piranha Plant attack project from last week. This time, the task was to make the Piranha Plant jump down three steps before connecting it to the attack animation against Mario. This exercise helped me understand the importance of transitions between actions. A character should not only complete separate movements, but also have continuous rhythm, clear weight shifts, and proper anticipation, so the jump and attack can feel natural.

At the same time, I continued improving my girl dancing animation. Based on previous feedback, I kept adjusting the body weight, pelvis rotation, and movement rhythm. I also tried using nCloth to create a skirt for the girl, hoping the fabric could move more naturally with her body. This made me think more about the relationship between character animation and cloth simulation, and how technical testing can influence the final visual result.

This week, Ting introduced us to the animation plugin AnimBot, which is a useful tool for animation work in Maya. It can help animators adjust keyframes more efficiently, copy and mirror poses, change timing, organise curves, and create smoother transitions. Compared with adjusting each controller manually, AnimBot can make the animation workflow faster and more convenient.

In class, Ting demonstrated some basic functions of AnimBot, such as how to quickly adjust poses, control animation timing, and make movements feel smoother. After that, we tried using the plugin to create an animation of a Piranha Plant attack. This exercise required us to show the plant character preparing, building up energy, and then attacking suddenly, so the rhythm and impact of the movement were very important.

Through this workshop, I found that AnimBot is not only a tool for improving efficiency, but also helpful for controlling timing and animation details more clearly. In the future, when working on more complex animation shots, I would like to continue using AnimBot to support pose adjustment, timing, and polishing.