Blocking and Key-posing

Overview

We will be creating the animation in 4 phases:

Blocking and Key-posing (this phase)
Character Animation
Animation Refinement

Assignments

(1) Blocking and Key-posing

This first-step in the animation process recreates your animatic with the finished art.

Start your blocking process in your Production Art file. Save the file as 'YourName-Blocking' and save it in your folder called 'Animation'

Instructions

You must use the techniques shown in the blocking demo
Set up all of the shots using the virtual camera
Create the key poses for each scene. Those are the poses that each scene would start with. A scene is defined as any time the camera is moved.
Do not create any tweens yet.
When finished, your blocked file should match your animatic, but with all of the finished art integrated.

Upload Your File

Upload it to your Animation Google Drive folder and name the file: FirstnameLastname-Blocking.fla

Watch Bill's Demos

Open the videos in YouTube to see a table of contents. You can use that as a checklist for completing the assignment.

Example File

Download the file used in the example

Here is a video export of the example file. It's a first draft and has some quality issues that will be addressed in the refinement phase.

Chicken-Blocking-finished.mp4

(1) If You Started a New File When Creating Your Design and Production Art ...

Then follow this video to see how to import your animatic into your Production Art file. You will need to do this before you can start blocking. You can skip this step if your animatic is already in your production art file.

(2) Make Sure Advanced Layers is Turned On: This is required for the camera tool to work

Choose Modify > Document from the top menu
Toggle on 'Use Advanced Layers'

(3) Add Visual Hierarchy by Using Layer Effects to Create Atmospheric Perspective.

(4) Follow This Blocking Demo

Continue to adjust the atmospheric perspective as the camera move in and out.
If Animate start to perform sluggishly, Quit it and all other graphics programs, then re-start your computer. That will re-allot the memory that os dedicated to Animate and things should speed up dramatically.

Additional Technique Demos

Just watch these, don't do them. Use them as additional reference.

Types of Symbols