Task and Content:
- Blocking Body mechanics shot
This week, I continued working on my animation. Teacher taught us a great method for gaining overall control of the movement. It involves stacking two cubes, with one representing the shoulders and chest and the other representing the main torso. Then, based on the reference, you keyframe the cubes. Just like sketching a draft in drawing, these cubes serve as the first step in summarizing the body’s motion patterns.
My blocking:
I believe the order of production is very important. For example, the body, as the first-level object of movement, should have its position determined first, followed by the feet.
I start by focusing on the details of the body’s rise, fall, and rotation, then move on to establish the relationship and positioning of the feet in relation to the ground.
Finally, I keyframe the arms and hands. For the last part, I make slight exaggerations — I want to extend the anticipation phase, allowing the character to build up more force in the opposite direction. Therefore, I enhance the actions based on the reference.
My feedback of this week
The issue is similar to the one I encountered with the silhouette poses earlier. In the reference, the arm movement is not very clear; for example, when jumping, the right arm is obscured by the body, which results in a lack of information.
This is something that needs to be considered in animation — how to re-design and modify the motion based on the reference to make the entire process more “animated.” Fortunately, the instructor gave me some great suggestions for arm poses.