Monday, May 24, 2010

Blocking to Final

This is the last animation of the magician. All three of them were done during advanced body mechanics class (that's term 3 in AM) so the idea was to make the character do things that demand working on getting timing and spacing right, the feeling of weight, balance, drag, overlap, etc...all the principles, so that when we start working on acting (term 4) the body mechanics are already there. That's why this magician does some things in a very exaggerated way – so that I can practice my body mechanics skills ;-)

This final shot shows him getting out from beneath the tank, getting up, making one last magic trick changing the tank back into Tailor and thanking the audience. I'll just make this one like last post, showing how I went from one version to the next.

So here's the blocking of the idea

The main comments I got from my mentor:
  •  the pose at 85 is too twinned, too even
  •  make the pose on 127 bigger and have him hold that
  •  there's not enough time for the audience to read the bow in the end, so simplify it. After all that quick action have Stewie simply lift Tailor and have Tailor thank the viewers.

So here's the re-block, after changing those things and starting to spline:


I see now that this still looks very even, seems all the movements happen at a similar speed - but while working on it I couldn't see this. Here are some comments I got on it:
  •  correct the weight around pose 85, shift the weight slightly or it'll look like he'll fall over.
  •  I was in doubt about how exactly I should keep Stewie alive in the end while holding that final pose, after all, the focus was on Tailor, not Stewie at that point. So my mentor told me to shift Stewie's weight after catching Tailor, have him raise the hand quickly then overshoot and settle.
  •  track the tip of the hat. Especially in the beginning, there is a very irregular movement going on there. Well, I mentioned this in another post...this pointy hat has this problem.

Here's the version that followed:
Now some comments start getting subtler, more specific, she said I still should work on the holds and break up the timing.
  • pick a primary pose and ease the other poses into it. So speed up from about frame 25 to 46 - have it happen over 15 frames. Then then hold 46 for 5 frames.
  •  on frame 73 let it overshoot and settle back the hip
  •  drag toe on 112 and on 118 shift his weight so it's on back foot
  •  128-158 is taking too long, could be 10-15 frames. Have Stewie catch Tailor just before he falls.

And finally:

It always helps seing which comments people get on their shots an how they progress. So I hope these posts about how I arrived to the final version were interesting. I tried not to make it too big so didn't write about all the comments I got, just the main ones.

I think one of the things that got a lot clearer to me during advanced body mechanics class is that we should always know when to simplify. Also, it's good to exaggerate and do all the crazy things animation allows us to do...but need contrast too, to have a nice texture in the animation...crazy can get boring too, if it's just that all the time.
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