Class 2 - Week 2: Blocking for Heel Click Shot

So, for the next couple weeks our task will be to take the reference we shot and planning sketches we came up with and realize that in a short animation with the Ballie character.

For this week's assignment, we were to get our basic idea fully blocked out for approval.  Here's what I came up with:




This was a interesting exercise, in that Dimos(our mentor) has challenged us to try and completely think about our animations this term as nothing more than a sequence of drawings(in this case, "poses", but it amounts to the same thing), and treat animating in CG more as you would if you were animating traditionally with pen and paper.  Along those lines, he advised that at this stage of the process worrying about how curves look in the graph editor is pretty much a complete waste of time...a departure from just about any other training I've ever received("I animate characters, not spaghetti" is how I believed he expressed it.)  This kind of struck home about halfway through my blocking, as I realized I was busting this stuff out waaaaaay faster than I normally had been. 

To this point, and that includes going back to my original training in 3D, it has been pretty much hammered home that clean curves in the GE are paramount...and keeping them clean from the earliest stages is "the preferred method."   So, after getting initial poses I would spend a great deal of time adjusting tangents even in the earliest of stages.  I can understand why one would think this way, and totally understand why one would want to use that method, but after doing it this way for even just a couple weeks......I'm pretty much sold.  Yes, I get that I will still be in the graph editor cleaning up stuff later.  Yeah, I understand that maintaining control of the tangents is paramount in some instances, but for getting down good looking blocking that will allow me to quickly begin adjusting timing/spacing,  using this method(treating the 3D poses as 2D drawings) just seems to blow my old method completely out of the water. 

It also dovetails nicely with another suggestion that Dimos has made a few times already this term: If you feel that you need another pose to control timing/spacing/whatever.....just create another pose and adjust the timing/spacing/whatever already!  If that means you're dropping poses on ones, then so be it.....yet another thing that was anathema, in my experience, so far.   "Economy of keys" has been pounded into my brain for so long, particularly when working on games, it's going to take some work to stop worrying about that. :)

As with all things, I'm sure there are instances where this method won't be as optimal.....but I'd be willing to wager they're few and far between.  To be able to do something that took me a day, or more, before and be able to get it to the same level of completion in hours is pretty awesome.  Hard to argue against something that makes you more efficient without losing any quality(and in most cases is improving it).