Refining the anticipation movement
This week, I refined the character’s anticipation movement before she jumps. She now holds a moving pose for nearly three frames, creating a subtle moving hold. During this hold, her legs press down slightly to avoid the pose looking frozen or static.
Since this moment is very brief, I aimed to introduce just a hint of motion in her legs. If the movement was too exaggerated, it would feel unnatural or distracting. So I kept the motion subtle, just enough to give it life without breaking the flow of animation.
Following George’s feedback, he pointed out that my character’s legs were pressing down too much during the anticipation pose—so much so that they even made contact with the mat. He suggested reducing the range of this motion to keep it more grounded and believable.
The goal is to avoid movements that a real human body couldn’t realistically perform. Taking his advice, I adjusted the leg motion to be more subtle and natural, maintaining the energy of the anticipation without breaking the realism of the animation.
Prepare facial expression animation:
I found a line on the website George recommended. The context is that Legolas says to an orc who’s about to be killed: “I would not antagonize her.”https://www.moviesoundclips.net/sound.php?id=296
It means: “If it were me, I wouldn’t provoke her.” (She’s too powerful—provoking her wouldn’t be a wise choice.)
video clips: https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/3143512a-dd25-4d78-b41d-d69a13928c55
However, the original scene doesn’t carry much emotional variation—it feels like it stays within a single emotional tone throughout. So I wanted to imagine a new scenario to explore a broader range of emotional expression for my animation.
I set a scene where the protagonist hears others talking about “her,” and he falls into regret, guilt, and sadness. If he hadn’t been so impulsive back then, maybe she wouldn’t have ended up like this (maybe she died or is seriously injured and unconscious).
Then the protagonist says to those people: “I would not antagonize her.”
There’s some anger toward himself, and also sadness, guilt, and uneasiness. He doesn’t know how to face the others’ eyes.
I recorded some videos and tried really hard to recreate that emotion, but they all looked kind of strange. Then George suggested that when I record, I shouldn’t look directly into the camera lens. Instead, I should look somewhere else, because the character isn’t talking to the camera—they’re talking to someone who’s standing in a different position.
So I re-recorded the video and picked one take. I chose two main poses: at the beginning, the character is standing and facing away. When he hears the conversation, he turns and looks in that direction, then says the line.