My first reference video wasn't accepted, because it was too repetitive, which looking back I'll admit it certainly was - the guy just kept leaping from object to object. So back to the drawing boards I went, and came back with a much more interesting piece with flips and a roll.
I decided to approach this animation a little different than usual, whereas I typically plan out where each contact and passing pose will be in accordance to the frame before I enter the computer, it wasn't going to work that well this time. Because I had multiple cameras, and a pretty complex scene, I had to build the set first, animate the camera, and set storytelling poses. This was very much a back and forth process, and as such I animated in a much more straight-ahead approach as opposed to planned pose-to-pose method. This resulted in a pretty quick blocking pass, but it was missing several contact and passing poses, however, a second blocking pass fixed that and I was able to spend a good deal of time working out the timing and pushing the extremes of the poses. At this stage I was quite happy with where I was, as was my instructor.
I'm now really starting to get a natural feel for body mechanics, and knowing when a character is in balance or doing something that they shouldn't be able to. Manuel suggested that I add character to my animation before I moved on to polishing my animation, so I decided to create an idea that my character was meditating at the beginning, to add contrast to the sudden explosion of energy.
When I began polishing, I decided to try a new technique that I had been suggested. I broke down my animation into much smaller pieces, moments. These moments could be 30-50 frames in length, something like standing up or a single jump, but when broken down into such small pieces, I could really focus on just what was going on at that point in time, and not get caught up in what had happened or what was going to happen. All in all, this lead to a much easier polishing pass, with far fewer headaches than I've ever experienced. The animation was smoother throughout, and there were fewer issues within the Graph Editor to fix. I still need to practice this method a lot more before I have it down fully, but it really seems to be the way to go.
The only area I truly had issues on, was the front roll. I had to redo the roll twice. I was aware that it is one of the more difficult actions to produce, due to rig capabilities, but it is also just a move that many people aren't aware of how it is physically performed, and we have a stereotypical idea implanted in our heads that gets in the way of how it actually happened. It took me a while to get past that view, and to implement what actually happens. It also did not help that I chose a horrible rig to do this particular animation with. I did not realize when I began that this particular rig was designed to be more of a subtle acting character, rather than an action character. But with that being said, it was still possible, and it just presented more practice for me.
I decided to light my scene, to make for a more pleasing effect. While it's not perfect, I am not a lighter and it accomplished what I desired, so I'm good with that for now.
All in all I'm pleased with my work, and my progress that I made in this semester, though I am still slightly disappointed in that I did not reach quite a height in any of my animations that I had hoped. With time permitting in the future, I intend to go back and redo the assignments with completely new ideas and animations, after all - they were fun and challenging.
