Manfred Ragossnig | Character Animator

Before I go on to write about what I’ll do next on this shot (final week, polishing) let me ramble about the problems I run into over the last weeks.

You’ll notice that over the last three weeks the part around f150 to f300 constantly changed. Why? That’s because my lack of proper planning. It all started with the audio clip. I had some (what I thought) pretty good ideas how to act in that shot.
1) Pretty good is not enough.

I shot the reference video (lots and lots of footage) and started to analyse the movements and emotional thoughts involved.
2) Too much reference video can be overwhelming.

Everything was planned out and I had the beautiful thumbnails nailed to the wall in front of me. Ahm .. not really “everything”. Because my refVid was not very clear how I wanted the character to act at the end and so I just thought “screw the thumbnails for the last part and do it straight ahead”. What a smart (insert *stupid*) idea!
3) Be sure to plan every aspect of your shot from the first until the last frame. No shortcut allowed!

I only animated what was on cam in the refVid. Hip to head. Bad Idea. Although only those parts of the body are on cam there is a good chance that the rest of the body (legs) is also moving (weightshift). After the blocking the character seemed to just stick there. Always at the same spot. No weightshift at all.
4) “Always” pose the legs and feets.

The lack of planning (the last frames) continued and the problems to get a decent weightshift where bigger than I’ve thought.

One week Mentor change because Raquel was away during thanksgiving.
In a production environment our mentor would be the director or the animation supervisor. We know the basics, now it’s all about acting. And people have different ideas how a character should act. Michelle was ok with the ending. A week later (already moved to splines) Raquel was not. Bad for me. But that’s just the way how it could be in a real production environment.

Back to the drawing table. New RefVid. Switched to stepped again (for the last part) and fired up new poses.
5) If you have to make big changes in your shot, don’t try to “fix it somehow in splined”, don’t be a lazy animator, start fresh, don’t fear the workload. I spend hours after hours on “fixing” the poses until I decided to burn them and start with fresh poses in stepped mode.

What’s next – Final Assignment, Polishing the Shot

1. f167-f186 better inbetweens, fix bad pose
2. Breakdowns to define arcs
3. Work on moving holds
4. Eye pass
5. Hand pass
6. Finger pass
7. another pose at the end?
8. drink more tee