The most difficult of these submissions was most definitely the ‘run and jump’ animation. It took the longest to complete and I’m still not satisfied with the outcome – I submit it like this only because I feel I’ve run out of options and don’t know how to fix it. It isn’t terrible, I like the general movement of the hands, feet and shoulders, but the head has an odd glitch that I didn’t see until I went to finalise the animation in January. The fix for the previous glitch didn’t work on this problem, and I find it distracting from the overall animation. I also have very little anticipation before the jump – this is true for the multiple references I used, but I feel it still doesn’t look right. If it were to start again, I’d exaggerate more and add the anticipation anyway. I would also start the loop between run cycles instead of just before the jump, as it is far too noticeable as is (again, something I repeatedly tried to fix, to no avail). 

Thankfully, the other two animations were much easier to do, and the process went much smoother.

The weight lift had a rough start – something still unknown went wrong with the face rig and I had to restart. Thankfully I was still in the blocking phase so it wasn’t too much trouble. I also had problems with parenting the weight to the model’s hands, I ended up animating the two objects separately, but they lined up well in the final product. I think the finished animation looks polished and clean and I did it in such a way that the loop didn’t need to be disguised in the movement, which is something I struggle with in 3D animation. I made use of the copy-paste-mirror shortcut (shown to us during the first assignment for the run cycles) in the hands so the weight would better line up with their movement. 

The final animation, the lip sync, went the smoothest in terms of production. I started out taking videos of myself, thinking I’d have to use it as a reference for the mouth movement, but Domic’s tutorial and the examples on the class slides were more than enough to get the animation right. After taking the pose reference photos, it was mostly a matter of filling in the blanks – as previously mentioned in the blog if I were to start again, I would add more fluidity, and possibly more poses. However, I think the final animation is up to standard and clearly showcases what I was asked to showcase. 

In conclusion, I still hold a strong preference for 2D animation over 3D, as even after a year and a half I still have a much better understanding of the 2D process and its programs. I am gaining a grasp on 3D, as the weight lift animation was fairly straightforward even with its minor setbacks, but the run and jump animation had me questioning if I knew anything about Blender. I look forward to the feedback, as I would like to learn where I went wrong and what I could’ve done to fix it – I hold out hope that, as usual, it’s a stupid little detail I overlooked that is easily fixed. That way, I’ll remember for next time!