Polishing and Final

Now it's time to start polishing! The main comments I got on it were:

• the movement in the beginning, when he's preparing to roll on the floor is too linear, track the tip of his hat to see the spacing. We should always try to make the movements as interesting as possible. A linear movement in this case doesn't work well and tracking the tip of his hat will give an idea of his speed.

• have Stewie anticipate that jump in the end and have his feet planted when he falls. Also make him bounce once, slightly. Though he's caught by surprise, he has to gather energy to jump like that. This way,it reads better.

• he doesn't have to swipe his head in the end for the audience to understand he's relieved. That's too much. No need to be so dramatic. He can only look up, happy he survived and then let his head fall because he's exhausted. After all that action, he doesn't need to do that broad „pheeew“ movement. As my mentor told me: the complex needs to go with the simple.

And about the ball/tank:

• think of the car as a heavy bouncing ball. Also make it go up a bit when it's trembling to have a small anticipation, then have it fall down quickly and bounce a couple of times. This anticipation should be there to show the audience what's going to happen. We also need to sell the idea that the tank is a threat, therefore it should look really heavy and bounce like something heavy.

Here's the polished animation...

After that one I got some more comments before reaching the final animation:

• track the tip of his hat. With that pointy hat, it's really easy to notice if there's a weird arc happening. So it helps tracking it to have that looking good. So there should be nice clear arcs when he's leaning back in the beginning and then when he bents into the roll. Also throughout the roll the tip of the hat should follow smooth arcs.

•  have the ball make a more interesting movement, like a simple figure eight, but not enough to get more attention than Stewie. Also have the ball get smaller and then the tank growing bigger and overshoot so it's a nice transition from one into the other.

And at last, the final animation:

Yes, it can get better, but the process of going through each step and getting lots of feedback already helped me learn so much!! This is why the next animation is nicer :-) I'll comment on that one next week!