Wednesday, June 05, 2013

Simple Block-In Animation


Here's a block-in of a simple jump and climb animation I did today. The goal was to do something more elaborate than a walk or run cycle but nothing so complicated I'd get all tangled up and quit in frustration. It was just going to be a quick jump from a hang (like you see in a game) but I decided to make it a little mini-movie after I got going. I believe I'm getting more fluent in my tools, because I had to shuffle time, add stuff at the beginning after I got the main thing done, then add stuff back at the end. There was a lot of compression and decompression of time - rescaling and adjusting the major beats. While it was challenging to do all that stuff, I never felt overwhelmed or like I wanted to just throw my hands up in the air in frustration. The camera stuff was something I just threw on after the fact (and found it to be quite fun and satisfying to animate). So it's a very rough first pass, and there's a lot of errors all over the place, but I dig it. It's fun to watch and I am now feel more confident in my working methods, which makes me want to keep at this. :)

6 comments:

MrGoodson2 said...

Nice work. Plus the reel just gets bigger and better.

Rickart said...

FUN!
I've doing a little camera work myself for the project I've been working on... it's remarkably satisfying. Like making little mini movies.


Davis Chino said...

Lookin' good, Surls!

Surly Bird said...

Thanks, fellows! It's chock-full of mistakes and could be improved in a million ways, but it's been a real catalyst moment for me. I feel like I've turned a corner and am taking real steps towards becoming the animator I've always wanted to be. Just have to keep learning, keep working, keep refining.

Benjamin. said...

I've tried rigging my own model in Blender. Found it very difficult.

Surly Bird said...

I've found rigging in Blender to be somewhat similar to how I would go about it in Messiah. It's not necessarily as easy (or forgiving), but it's been mostly a positive experience. Most people don't use Messiah, though, so that's probably not going to mean much. I really like the different types of bones you can choose from (three types, if I recall correctly). They all have advantages and disadvantages, but it's nice to have the option.