Author: Zhuolin Feng

—-Notes

Blocking

Stepped Key Poses

Fundamental approach

Easy to Edit

Inner Monologue Timing Tool

Arcs

Weight Check

Compare Thumbnails

Watch at Speed

Blocking is essentially the skeleton of the body!

We want to add in the bare bones of the shot which we primarily want to start off with our key poses or story telling beats.

It is always a good rule of thumb to be posing out your character in your perspective view and not your shot camera view since you can make sure it looks good from multiple angles.

• A nice quick way to get blocking done especially if you have similar poses going on throughout the animation is to copy those poses other and just give them slight translation and rotation adjustments so they are not the same.

Make sure you include the hand/fingers in your blocking on the key poses! They don’t need to look amazing but a nice rough pose especially if it helps the rest of the pose will help you a lot later down the line when it comes to spline and polish.

Don’t rely too heavily on the timing of your reference out this point just be sure to utilize the thumbnail/sketches of the poses you have and just capture those. There is no need to be super in depth about where certain things move or how long it takes this early on just trust in your drawings and create your poses off that first. Then once you have done that then you can go back and make a timing/clean up pass using your reference to help you a bit but that is only if you are having a hard time.

Be sure to use FK/IK where it is needed! If you are making a character rotate like a flip or some kind of roll and you have IK on the feet, you will have to set a key on those feet quite a lot but just as your character leaves the ground to do this flip or roll you can switch it to FK and avoid all those unnecessary keys and instead utilize the free animation you get from it. Another reason for this is that you can get something called gimble lock where you start creating multiple rotations and maya doesn’t understand the correct rotation order causing things to go crazy. You will only need to adjust these IK/FK controls when you character leaves/touches the ground.

Homework 02

Finished not perfect!

Next week I want “finished” blocking not perfect blocking of the key poses and maybe some breakdowns. If you work in spline switch it to stepped before you show me!

 the assignment is….

1. Block out your shot, including your main keys and breakdowns. Poses should be clear, dynamic, and appropriate for the theme you have picked.
2. Frame Limit: 120 – 240 frames IN 24FPS. No moving cameras for this shot. Keep focused on the character action and make sure it reads clearly. Avoid using constraints on this first shot.
3. Keep the technical aspects of your shot simpler for at least this first go.

—-Work

—-Notes:

Planning:
Thumbnails
Reference (190frames 24FPs 《Mei》 walk plus turn movement)
Journal Workflow
Layout
Staging
Composition
Story (The overall style of the action is playful and cheerful. The background is walking on a road for the time being.)

Line of action

Make a pose more dynamic and interesting.

Make the line.

—-The line creates a force that makes action easy to follow.

—-Use lines of action to tell us where to look.

Homework:
Planning Stage
•Go over rough planning drawing for initial idea
•Fixed camera, prop interaction (avoid constraints)
•Keep it to 5-10 seconds at most. (8 seconds)

Reference
•Video reference is a goldmine for both the planning stage and as a resource to help you with problems at every stage of animation.
•Get as close to the camera angle as possible, shoot alternates if possible if it’s a complicated action.
•For physicality, try to get a subject as close to the body type as possible.
•If you are trying to show weight or balance, make sure you capture the real deal in the reference! Don’t fake it.
•Make sure you can see your subject clearly and as large as possible in frame.
•Try different things, Be safe.

Sketches/thumbnails
•Step through the reference and try to translate what I see breakdown the action so I can better understand it, see what you didn’t expect to see the more you breakdown the action in sketches, the faster your blocking will go.
•Make notes of interesting details you think can be important for the later stages.

—-Work

Reference:

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