I had my first two shots finished, and the next two files were currently occupied so I went ahead and asked if anyone was working on the fourth file and no one said they were yet so I decided to go ahead and do my section on this.
This was the file as I downloaded it for a baseline to show.
Movement
The first thing I wanted to change, was to add a little skid halt instead of the quick stop. This would add a bit of fun as well as transferring the momentum better and allowing me to use the tilt controls better. The first pass I did on this just didn’t last long enough so I made sure to hold frames for a bit longer, there was also an issue where I thought it snapped a bit too hard.
Then I went and adjusted the graphs to make this a bit better, I didn’t have a lot of frames to move about in so, ideally I would have stretched this moment out a bit but for now this is what I have.
There is a part here where I decided to work smarter and not harder, I just didn’t animate anything in this moment where the camera cuts away.
Noise Warning: Mute before playing!
Body/Head
Then I went and worked on the body. The first area I wanted to tackle was the counterweight to the skid, this was the first version I did and it worked enough.
I then wanted to see how increasing the time on this would work a bit better, and I’m not sure if I liked this. Having more frames would definitely work but I was a bit worried on how this would offset other characters and the ball, since they weren’t blocked out. I decided to just scrap this extra time and issues it was bringing.
I then went and worked on moving the body in an arc, and even went and adjusted the tilt control to do this too. The sharpness is pretty obvious so I did note this to fix up in a bit, I think this is mainly due to the shoulders, so I am hoping that by changing them I can correct that.
I then went and copy pasted the values into the top two spine for the shoulder shaky moments from my first section. These really aren’t noticeable, as I think the majority of that movement came from the neck and head so I will copy those over and see about making adjustments to these all accordingly.
I then went ahead and started to add on the neck and head movements.
I started off looking at the little skid movement and then once I got that handled I would go and add in the other keys.
I went ahead and decided to exaggerate a look back to the ball and then fiddled with the graphs to adjust the easing. Then I went and added the head movements to drop low after contact with the ground and go back out a bit as it was in the air. I think I will need to adjust the spine movement at least a bit with these, but until I sort out the arm movements I can’t know for sure.
Arms
To get my arm movements I went and pasted the previous arm values from the first section for one cycle of movement, and I could just paste these along the timeline and adjust them. These looked really stiff so I knew I would need to adjust them a bit later on, but for now I wanted to get the basic guide down.
I then went and worked on the skid, and I actually used myself as reference as I skidded briefly crossed my room and felt what my arms did. I then tried to mimic this with Fidget.
I then just adjusted the movements a bit better, as well as adding in some finger moment to highlight the movement.
I went and left this alone for now, getting the base down and then going back later and tweaking this is the approach I was going for. Since by adding other elements it could aid or ruin some other elements.
Hair
For the hair I just copied the keys data and went though and pasted these to match the fast pace of this shot. I only did this for the first shot in case I didn’t like how it turned out but, yeah this works well enough.
I then went and duplicated these to the rest of my characters movement, making sure it fit in line with those particular keys.
With the more repetitive movements done I could go and add animation for the skid, I just made a delayed rotate to create drag on either side and let that lead in the other animation.
Ears
I went and added in the ears using the values from my first section, putting them into the same elements so that it followed along with bounces.
Then I went ahead and worked out the rest of the ear movement, including how I would approach the skid. I had wanted to have this drag element, but this ended up looking too elastic and goody and so I scrapped this entirely.
I decided to go and make the ear bounces a bit more intense as she got closer to the camera, as before I had thought they were too subtle, other wise these worked fine.
Details
Then I just had to go and finish off this section by adding the little details.
I started off by rotating the fingers, making them into a loose fist when it is raised forward and relaxed when it swings back. I also went and had her fingers splay outward as her right arm went out on the skid for some extra movement.
Then I went and sorted out the face, adjusting the eyes to be dilated and scared (when she turns the corner, and sees how close the ball is), and moving them to check back on the ball at certain points. I also went and added in the facial expressions, like the open and closing mouth to create the idea of huffed breathes and the frowny face. I also raised the eyebrows for this too.
The hair curl rotates as Fidget makes contact with the ground so it swishes back and forth with the momentum.
I went and made the bag and dagger bounce with momentum of the hops, making sure it moves in arcs as it goes out and curves to rotate on contact.
Adjustments
For the adjustments I didn’t get to look at too many graphs right now, but instead I made a start on trying to get the ball to move for the chase (which also let me adjust the ending point of the scene).
For the ball I was trying to take on the note we had gotten weeks prior about having it roll along the wall instead of bouncing. So I had went and keyframed in the movement first and then went back and rotated the ball. This first version, I didn’t like this roll along the walls as it seemed to subtle and it also seemed to slow down in the last shot.
I went and fixed this final shot up first, I resolved this issue by moving my character further in her jumps, which allowed me to push the character’s out of the set and more closely capture what we wanted for the previs.
This was then how I had left the file, there is a bit of adjustment that needs to be done with the balls movement, especially with linking it to the shot previous (on another file), and I would definatley like to have a pass on my character’s graphs a bit better but I wanted others to be able to get their main animation done and not spend too long on these so this was how I left it!