It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s 21 to 27 February 2016.

On Sunday I finished the splining on my 11 Second Club entry and experimented with the camera angles. I let it sit for a couple of days to clear my head then jumped into polish on Wednesday. This week’s video is the state of the shot as of Friday evening. Well.. 2:00am Saturday morning to be more specific. 🙂

So! By the polish stage, I had smoothly moving characters. Final splining was looking promising but there were still many rough patches to polish. Some movements were subtly jerky, some gestures made no sense (the “sausages!” gesture in particular), there were consistency issues between shots.. so lots to make nice and fix…

…as long I could see what to fix instead of just opening the file and tinkering. 🙂

Fortunately there were notes coming in from helpful folks on the 11 Second Club forums. I got picked up on jerky movements, hands moving in unnaturally straight lines, over-quick blinks, lack of movement in the legs and emotions registering too late. Very helpful to guide my attention.. as well as Looch’s suggestion about the opening camera angle.

All in all, this month has been hugely educational and a massive confidence-booster. Animation is no longer a spooky boogeyman to me. Even though I’ve learnt a ton, I still have a zillion things more to learn – and they’ll come with experience. Better still, I’ve got a much stronger sense of the needs of the pipeline up to the point where animation takes place – useful and time-saving rigging practices, what an animator benefits from performance-wise, that kind of thing.

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading!