Sneak Animation

Wow, so it's been a while since I've posted, but it's been a hectic couple of months and I'm just now getting back to posting.  Luckily I have managed to keep myself busy and continue my work.

In January, I began workshop 3 at iAnimate, advanced body mechanics.  My first assignment was a character walk/sneak.  I could do anything I wanted, but my mind was a little stuck on the sneak, so I decided to go with a cartoony animation in which my character would attempt to steal a cookie from a jar.  I thought about going with a child, but I thought it was a little cliche, so I went with an adult character.  The reference shooting went quite well and was excited to start the animation.  My instructor was very pleased with the level of acting I had incorporated into my performance.

This animation actually ended up causing a lot of unforeseen problems for me.  A lot of which stemmed from poor pre-planning, which I have now gone and modified into my workflow for future work.  I had decided to work the whole animation in hand IK mode, which really it didn't need to be except for at two points and with a working IK/FK switch I should have just gone that route.  The animation also evolved significantly as I went, which led to it being quite different from the reference in the end.

I also had a wonky looking walk throughout most, which with the help of my instructor I eventually figured out was due to the fact that tend to keep the feet and hips wide, almost cowboyish, which does not lend itself well to a natural looking walk.  It's something that I'm working on and I'm getting it out of my work quickly thankfully.

I also ran into a few problems due to conflicting advice on part of my instructor, where he'd really insist one particular action, and then the next week decide I should go in a totally different direction, only to go back to the original idea the next week.  While this is quite frustrating, I have to just realize that this is the nature of the job, working at studio the director may ask for many different ideas on a day to day basis, and it's my job to deliver as efficiently as possible.

My efficiency is another thing that threw me off on this animation, and it's something that I'm happy to say I'm now improving on dramatically (though that's for later post).  I have had the habit of putting too many in-betweens and non-essential poses in my blocking stage and then rushing to spline before I'm truly ready.  In this case of this animation, I did just that and spent a good majority of my time just attempting to smooth out and fix small things, which, had I taken my time in the beginning would have saved me hours of frustration at the end (and probably a better result all in all).

At the end however, I am pleased to say that it all came together to produce a nice animation piece.  I decided to give it some lighting and simple textures to give more story and atmosphere and I'm pretty proud of it.