ANI174 - Week 11

What? So What? Now What?

I've been blocking out my first pass of animation this week, using my recorded reference going pose to pose. The rig is very easy to use and I was able to do all of the blocking out in a single night. I also time lapsed this one just like the last project.

When blocking out the body movements I am trying to consider how I will be adding in more keyframes in later passes to smooth everything out so I only key the major body movements. I want to add some shaking in the head but it will be a bit subtle compared to everything else so I want to deal with that on the second pass instead.

Once pass one of the body was complete I then did a quick pass of the mouth. I didn't spend too much time thinking about the mouth movements all that much and eyeballed it for the most part as the face controls are pretty simple so getting the mouth shapes to look good is very quick. I can refine it later on in pass 2 or 3 but for now I will focus on the upper body because in my opinion it is the most important part.

During class I received some feedback from my classmates regarding my blocking pass. The main feedback is to make sure the animation doesn't feel "floaty" and to consider the movement of the character's feet as their shift in weight should also effect how the feet are placed.

In my second pass I will be sure to incorporate this feedback, especially the feet which I hadn't put much thought into but I recognise it will be pretty important so make sure it looks consistent with the rest of the body.