COSC 3P98 ANIMATION PROJECT Karate Kid © Ming Hui Lin - Fall 2004 View the Animation (Zip AVI Format - 6.7 MB)

Introduction:

This animation movie is 21 seconds in length. It is about a karate kid use kick to beat up a villain.

Resolution: 320 x 320
Frame rate: 30 frames/s
Data rate: 840 kb/s
Total Frames: 630
Uncompressed file size: 17.2 Mb

Development Environment:

Software:

• Poser 4.0: a program specialized for human character animation
• AudioEdit Deluxe: a simple program that converts mp3 audio file into wav audio file
• MP3Cutter 4.0: a simple utility that cuts out pieces of a MP3

Hardware:

• Window XP
• P4 2.4Mhz
• 512MB RAM

Camera:

camera animation is used at the beginning of this animation movie. The camera position is changing as the karate kid jumps up in the air, and then kicks the villain. It gives the viewer different views of the same character. Here are the keyframes for the camera animation.

Props:

Three background walls (left, behind, and right) for added realism and contrast. The box prop was used as wall which was then stretched and texture-mapped. Below are two screen shots of the scene as seen from the "Top Camera" and "Aux Camera".

Texture:

Textures are used for the walls and the ground in this movie, and Poser wrapped the image onto the object automatically. The images below were taken from the internet.

Ground	Wall

Audio:

A Japanese soundtrack "Fist of the North Star" is used in this animation movie. The original audio file I downloaded from the internet was in mp3 audio format. First, I used AudioEdit Deluxe to convert it into wav audio format, the only audio format that can be imported by Poser. Then, I used MP3Cutter to cut the soundtrack into 21 seconds which is equal to the length of this animation movie.

Keyframes:

I use keyframes in every 30 frames to let Poser to automatically generate the frames in between the keyframes. I designed some cool fighting poses for the two characters in each key frame. Below are some of the cool keyframes.

lighting:

Appropriate lights are created to simulate the light environment that matches the walls and emphasizes the mystery of karate kick.

Conclusion:

This animation project was very interesting. I learned some important animation concepts and techniques such as key frame and texture. Key frame saves a lot of time in developing the animation movie. However, minor adjustment is needed in the intermediate frames in order to get a better result.

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Any Comments?