While some of my classmates seemed to take to Maya relatively easily, I struggled a great deal to get to grips with the numerous functions and controls which allow us to manipulate and animate the 'Moom' character we will be working with for this module. Consequently, while some people chose to immediately begin piecing together simple animations, I felt I needed a little time to practice working with the Maya.
One of my main problems was that at first I didn't realise that I needed to change the transformation selection (w = translate, e = rotate etc.) before each movement of a joint. It was also not always clear which joint needed manipulating in order to achieve certain poses, while, frustratingly, some transformations do not always seem to work for all joints.
In spite of these teething issues, I am looking forward to building my skills with Maya, while the fact that we have been provided with a ready made character alleviates the pressure of having to come to terms with modelling at the same time as animating using this program. It also allows us to more closely focus on building our animation skills without being distracted by character deign. The fact that the entire group is using the same character with minimal features means that we must work hard on building a strong performance to imbue 'Moom' with appeal and personality.
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