Introduction

This project is, in my opinion, a little too ambitious if I try to implement everything that I would like to implement. My today's experience with Alias clearly showed that animation is a quite hard thing to do. Anyway, here it is, in its full glory and pride...

The Inspiration

Remembering those "good old days" when I was back home in Kazakhstan (former republic of, again, former Soviet Union; just in case you were curious where in the world Kazakhstan is, here is a map of the Commonwealth of Independent States which you can use to determine the location of Kazakhstan relative to the rest of the world and here is the map of Kazakhstan itself; on that map you can find the city I came from, Karaganda) I used to watch figure skating on TV. I did it quite often and liked it very much. As a matter of fact, that was one of my family's favorite pass time activities. So, thinking about what to do for the project, I came up with this weird and wonderful idea of animating a figure-skater. There were some other ideas, e.g. animating a bungee-jumper (I can relate to the experience - been there, done that), but remembering the fact that, believe it or not, I tried to fugure-skate myself (until I broke my leg), I said "Well, what the heck... ." Hence,

The Proposal

The project is broken up into several stages. Each stage (except the first one) either builds on top of and/or is an addition to the previous one. The list is subject to changes, refinements and reordering, for I do not have a precise idea of how I am going to go about implementing each and every item on the list and how much time it will take me to do that. Besides, I am not sure if I the subdivision is reasonable in all cases. Anyway, here is the list of things I would like to implement:

1. Complete assignment #1 in order to get a feel for how basic animation can be done and familiarize myself with Alias.
2. Create a simple model of a figure-skater using Alias.
3. Animate the fugure-skater using key-framing and spline interpolation techniques. A more or less realistic sliding of the figure-skater on the surface of ice will suffice.
4. Make the model of the skater more sofisticated in terms of how it looks.
5. Drawing from the experience and insights into animation gained from accomplishing the previous stage and digesting what I will hear during the lectures and what I will read in the book (Watt and Watt), come up with a physically based model of the figure-skater and create an animation using that model. Again, a simple sliding motion will do for this part.
6. Introduce a small noise into the sliding motion, so that the motion does not look very stiff.
7. Introduce new movement types and, possibly, jumps. I will probably have to get a book about the figure-skating at this point and look up formal definitions of those movements.
8. Work on the smooth transitions between different movements.
9. Introduce a small noise into all the newly defined movements for the same reason it was done in 6.
10. Implement viewing the skater from different positions and different distances (close-ups, etc.) during the progress of animation.
11. Animate the face of the skater - especially usefull for the close-ups.
12. Put some clothes on the skater and animate them.
13. If I ever reach this point, which I seriously doubt, it is a good place to start thinking about the story. So, this item on the list is to come up with a story.
14. Create an animation of the story.
15. etc. - ???

Conclusion

For the list above, it is up to you where to draw lines between reasonable things to do, things that could get somewhat painful if I try to implement them in addition to what's reasonable, and a complete insanity in terms of how much time and effort it is going to take me to do what I'd like to do. I am not sure about the grading criterias either. In any case, I am hoping that I can receive some help during the course of the project implementation. I'll be very happy if I reach stage 4 and just downright exultant if I get pass stage 5. Of course, you can have a totally different perspective on things.