Animation Process

Two weeks ago I bought this wonderful book suggested by everybody. Indeed it contains some fantastic information on how to ease our lives in Maya.

At this point I had my Ace animation blocked out. Feedback stated that at most places it was too floaty and lacked sharp movements.

So with new blocking techniques under my belt I tried to do it again.

It was the stepped tangent approach where all of the key poses are created in a row and then spaced out to match the timing. It turned out well but I realized that I had already spent a reasonable amount of time on the previous version and that fixing it would be more efficient than continuing the new one.

And so I did.

Now I feel that the body animation is nearly finished. I added more arcs for the head, more variations here and there.

There are still some things I'll have to tweak but now I shall move on to lip-syncing.

In my case most of the acting in the reference video is done by the eyes and brow area.. bring on the challenge! :)