Research, References and Reflection

Weightlifting

Sync Sketch: https://syncsketch.com/sketch/MWZmZjgxMGVm/

 

A weightlifting animation is an animation that depicts a character performing weightlifting exercises. It showcases the movements and actions involved in lifting weights, such as gripping the barbell, lifting it off the ground, and raising it overhead. It shows the feeling of how heavy the object is.

 

For this animation I looked at Olympic athletes as references. This Type of lift is called Clean and Jerk and it is one of the most dramatic ones compared to snatch lift or power clean. The clean and jerk is a total body movement that stresses nearly every muscle in the body. I looked at their forms and poses.

Particularly reference of ones struggling or ones of a very heavy mass. I also first blocked it out in 2D to get an idea of the timing.it starts with a squash and stretch, bending down quickly anticipating for the lift. The hardest part about moving heavy object is starting the first lift slowly. Then a fast follow through, after some exaggeration. Another reference is from the rookies website on weightlifting body mechanics. (Body Mechanic | Weight Lifting Animation | The Rookies)

 

In the weightlifting sport my character would have terrible form and posture in real life. The arcs are softer. As you can see from the lines here. Loosely following arcs  from weightlifting in the loobynooby.com and the animators survival kit.

 

Understanding weight and the mass of the object was to understand the centre of gravity this was really important when i was approaching this animation. Which I tried to play with in this animation as a part of storytelling. The stance during the squash and stretch shows the distribution to balance out the centre of gravity and to support the weight.  When the weight is gathering energy to do the overhead lift there is an imbalance shown through the character adjusting and readjusting in in the legs. I animated this in threes and the added in between. Using key poses as my guide.

Again, for the object I used child to constraints and had it as a separate action, if I had time I would have liked it to  have rigged the weight and have it wobble and bend against the force of the lift and drop. Things I would improve on now is the hand grip animations. they clip through the bar and in some frames they are not touching it. i think the fluidity towards the end could have been improved as the directed of the right arm was too twisted and there for the the drop of the arm was stiff and choppy.

What I am happy about is the posing and timing of this animation i think it turned out well it it performed the amount of story telling i wanted which was to show a bit of struggle due to weight.

Credits

“Barbells” (https://skfb.ly/oyVus) by IanCola1998 is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).