The first task for this assignment is a weight lift animation. To help me to better understand how to perform a natural and realistic weightlifting movement, I’ve found some reference videos and information that show the heavy or light weight on the object to be lifted as well as how the character’s body features respond to the weights while lifting the object. I learned from Richard Williams’ book “The Animator’s Survival Kit” that when a character is lifting a heavy object, they usually have their back straight going slightly arched forward and stick as close to the object as they can, so they have an additional part to hold it in instead of their arms and hands. The main influence over whether the object will be successfully lifted or not is the character’s back when they grip it and hoist it. Additionally, if the back is not positioned correctly, it can be easily injured. I’m considering creating an animation like the example in Richard Williams’ Animators Survival Kit, incorporating pull, drag, and squash to create an effect that is more dramatic.
I looked at a lot of examples showing how people lift big objects before starting to work on my final weightlifting video. The first one I looked at was more akin to a knowledge video about safe and proper weightlifting techniques. When lifting an enormous amount of weight, we must bend our back, waist, knees, and squad down to pick it up, according to a few principles that have significantly improved my comprehension of weightlifting. Aodhan also mentioned that while lifting a heavy object, we often bend our knees lower than the object and, if it’s below your waist or lower, place our pelvis just about level with the object.
https://youtu.be/z4epeIusue0?si=neSu9uOQyd1YCHVV
I used one of the reference videos that Aodhan provided us during the lecture, and I also found one myself, based on my final decision to have my character hoist a big, round rock. When I compared them, I noticed that they both did the same thing: they bent their bodies into a C shape and then reached as close to the rock as they could. They basically used their bodies as wrappers to wrap themselves around the rock to pick it up. To gain greater strength to raise the stone higher, they both sort of paused after taking it up, did a tiny squad down, and set the rock closer to their bodies.
he Ardblair Stones (18kg-152kg) with Andy Crawford , no tacky, 3rd attempt, all 9 stones completed
Additionally, I discovered several 3D weightlifting references in which the individual in the video pulls and drags their arms and body a lot while attempting to lift heavy objects. I think they would be helpful to me in improving my sense of weight and making my weightlifting more dramatic.
Animation – Lifting a Heavy WeightÂ
I don’t have anything that is comparable to or as heavy as the rock, but I have some weights that I have attempted to lift to experience the feeling of pull and drag. Furthermore, I let myself to experience how my body would react as I lifted the weight off the ground in the lifting of rocks posture.
I started to work on my weight lift animation with the various blocking poses referencing the video that I discovered online. I begin to incorporate in-between movements to make the character move smoothly and the action seem more natural once I believe that I’ve created enough key poses. Then play round with different timing of the frames. After that, I forward it to Aodhan for feedback.
The first set of feedback I received from Aodhan was that while my animation started out good, I could experiment more with the timing of specific actions to break up the pacing because the frames were too evenly spaced out, which kind of made the character’s movement appear slower and less natural. I shortened the time frame between movements and extruded the length of the key action to solve the problem. I added an additional frame where the figure stretched higher to break up the similarities between the tug actions in frame 40 and the action in front of it, as suggested by Aodhan. Aodhan mentioned that the fall from frame 85 was too slow due to the length of time between movements. He advised that I remove a few drawings, which I did to address the issue. I also adjusted the pace slightly for the several frames in which the character is falling to the ground. Aodhan’s final suggestion for the first section was that there isn’t a realistic sense of impact from Frame 95, where the character doesn’t feel the weight of the rock falling on top of him. He recommended that I give the character more squashes and make the arms and legs swing up and down as the character falls. To correct this, a few drawing frames were removed, and the character’s arms and legs swung higher as they fell to the ground rather than bending and taking in.
Aodhan’s second set of feedback on my weight lift animation was that, although the timing of the fall appeared better, I may have made a mistake by removing a pose that had strong anticipation, which I should add back into the animation. He advised that I delay the drop of the legs and arms instead of having them fall at the same time as the head. The landing of the fall also looked better, but I could have some more experimental timing variations with the legs and arms to provide more sense of appeal.
Final: