The animation itself is easy to complete, yet the lighting (Omni light) for the first scene is more important, because it is the beginning of a show. Therefore, the stage lighting starts with dark and gradually becomes very bright by adding its Mutiplier value under Intensity/Color/Attenuation section. Also, the camera moves towards (by reducing the Target Distance) the character as it is going to get closer to Mr Joker and make an emphasis.

Scene no.2

The second scene is that Mr Joker demonstrates his big red nose, which is one of the most typical representatives of a clown’s image. In this scene, Mr Joker is pointing at his nose, the significant part here is to show how to rotate or twist the fingers by simulating the human “finger-pointing” action. The camera here is placed also right in front of the character. As is shown, the shadow is behind the character, meaning that the light is ahead. However, I begin to use the Target Spot as a light in this scene due to the lighting condition/problem. Omni light was applied before, but the animation didn't look bright enough after being rendered, hence, I turned to employ Target Spot according to 3d max tutorial. Moreover, , the shadows were set to be Area Shadows under the General Parameters section and the shadow color was set to be grey with 0.7 Dens under the Shadow Parameters section. All these setting have been chosen after a few times experiments with comparison on the character.

Scene no.3

This scene is to display Mr Joker’s costume by following the movements of his hands pointing from the head until facing two hands toward the audience. The difficult part in this scene is that it is an action for two hands; therefore it is not easy to manage them having exactly the same movement at the same time. In addition, there is quite lots of rotation of both arms and hands, which might result in that certain area is distorted by mistake without any notice. As it is shown in the last clip, the right hand of the character has been distorted after the animation, which I couldn't even “remedy” it, as envelop didn't work so well in this area.

Scene no.4

Mr Joker is trying to show off his special clown shoes that differ from the others. The animation in this scene has been improved after I did some user-test. A good advice has been taken into consideration and then the animation was revised again. The reason inducing this difference in the transformation is that the movement of the foot affects the calf slightly, which makes it obvious to see whether the foot works well or normal. In the old version, I only made the foot move but with the calf static, which looked a bit weird. However, this movement succeeded in the new version and looks much better.

Scene no.6

A clown is always good at many things such as juggling. So is Mr Joker! He is one of the best jugglers who master the skills how to juggle three balls or even more at a time. Look! He is pretty enjoying juggling and amusing his audience simultaneously. A good point in this scene is to consider how to juggle by oneself and calculate when the ball drops and when to rise the hand to catch the ball. After having several times of experiment in the real world on my own and I found out how to deal with the timeline as to enable my character to be a “best juggler”! On the other hand, the movements of the eyes are important as well, for it is a reaction among the body, eyes and concentration. It is the eyes that connect the brain and body language together.

Scene no.7

The last scene is to use the Morph modifier for simulating facial expression. It sounded complicated and difficult as I expected earlier, however, after I have viewed Jo's and some fellow students’ notes regarding morphing, I finally managed how to use it onto my character.

The entire procedure is as below:

Detach the whole face from the rest of the body, as it is only the facial animation that will be morphed. Then highlight the face and clone it.

1. Rename the copy one as “surprise” (expression word) and change the expression of either the eyes or the mouth of the mesh. Note that it is a complete copy from the original one, I attempted to delete some vertices on the face, and then the morpher didn't work.

2. Select the original face and apply Morpher modifier from the modifier list.

3. Click on an empty channel under Channel List, a small box appears saying pick from scene. Pick the “surprise” face and now the morph starts to work with showing a green sign next to the panel. The facial expression will be changed by adjusting the small arrows on the right side showing the weight (0-100) of the morph.

The final facial animation has been done through the mouth to a great extent and slight transformation of the eyes. The camera stays right in front of the character and then drastically gets close up to the face in order to highlight the morphing details.

Final character animation