Blocking

After giving an overview of the animation process last post, let's see those steps in more detail. The animation we'll be going through now is a sequel to the last one. So Stewie (that's our character's name) is now standing in the same pose he finished the last shot and looking at the ball to see what's gonna happen next.


The ball – actually the bewitched Tailor – will then start floating and Stewie will see it going up. Worried about his next actions, our magician will make a dramatic roll on the floor to better position himself for another magic trick. This trick will not work very well, and Tailor will turn into a heavy tank which will fall on a scared Stewie, that will fortunately have time to lie on the floor to protect himself.

After analizing the reference video, I made the planning, defining the key poses and the approximate timing. With that in mind I made the blocking you can see here:

In blocking I leave the tangents that define the transition from one pose to the next in stepped mode. So we stay in one pose until we get to the frame when the next one should start and there's no fluid movement going on. Here's a snapshot illustrating that:

#1 – 19: Stewie is looking at the ball. He'll actually be moving slowly into the next pose, but as mentioned before, this is blocking, so the transitions are abrupt. As I mentioned in those posts about poses, we should always look for nice arcs and clear silhouettes, so his arms are sepparated from his body and there's a nice line of action going on.
 

 #20-25: He's looking at the final position of the ball. Since he's very dramatic (and, yeah, we want to push the poses) he's not only looking up with hands in his pockets, instead he's bending his body to the side and back and putting most of his weight on screen right (SR) foot. Yep, never forget the character needs to keep in balance when he's standing still!!

#26-27: Preparing to roll, looking at the floor, starting to lower his body to start that movement.

#28-30: Nice arc on his spine, going towards the floor. Extending arms to help him roll. Looking to the floor.

#31-33: One elbow preparing to help support the weight and SR hand starting to contact floor to push body. One leg supporting the body, the other almost lifting for the roll.

#34-36: In the roll

#37-41: Finishing roll. Not so clear silhouette, but when he's in motion we'll understand well what's going on.

#42-46: starting to get into the kneeled position, using one hand to push him up. Not a very strong pose, but it's needed to get him up.

#47-51: Looking at the ball up there, preparing to do his magic. Bowed forward. Attention, SR arm is in front of the body, bad visibility there, but sometimes we simply can't escape that.

#52-54: Anticipation – body twists to his right to gather energy to cast the spell. The hand with the wand goes back and the other hand counter-balances going to the front.






#55-58: Starting to come forward, one knee lifting...

#59-69: Abracadabra! Pointing wand at ball, looking at the ball too. One foot's planted on the floor now. Clear silhouette, clear line of action.

#70-79: Breathing in, fill lungs (Gotcha!). Still holding the Abracadabra pose

#80-88 : Breathe out, still holding pose, moving slighlty so it doesn't seem frozen.

#89-93: Move body forward preparing to get up, still looking at the ball to see what happened.

#94-97: Still getting up, the body needs to be over the SL leg so he can lift the back foot. Using arms to balance.

#98-101: Up now, still a bit curved, looking up curious about what's gonna happen next. Stepping forward slowly.

#102-106: Straightens up, looks down for a moment, thinking everything's all right. Pose is a bit boring I have to admit now.

#107-114: Realizes there's something huge up there and panics. Tried to avoid twinning legs and arms here to make it a more interesting pose.

#115-131: Falls flat on the ground so he can have a chance to survive (dramatic :-) )

#132-146: Looks up to make sure everything's all right, he made it.

#147-150: puts some weight over SL arm to lift the other one and wipe his forehead.

#151-154: Finishes „Phew“ movement

So this is an overview of what's going on with the poses. I could make a lot more comments about them, but it wouldn't add much I guess.

During blocking, I played around with the timing because it wasn't exactly the way I had planned it. After all, it depends on the character's body structure as well and what feels right for him: it's not just applying the timing we have in the reference video.

So I had to move some poses poses around a bit in the timeline to have him do those poses in the way that seemed appropriate for him. This also involves giving him time to think. That's a very important lesson I learned throughout the development of the previous animation. So when he's under the tank, for example, he keeps his head down for a while, then raises it and thinks, „Yeah, I made it!!“ and only then wipes his forehead.

Hope this was interesting to someone...Next post will be about the feedback I got from this blocking, how I changed the animation according to that and how I went into the next phase. It changed a lot, you'll see :-)