This section will focus on the creation of overlapping action and follow through as well as pose-to-pose, with 3D the idea of pose-to-pose is a little different from how it’s done in 2D but the core concept is the same. Creating Key frames is “The storytelling drawings” they’re an important part of the whole, these poses express the intent and what happens next throughout the situation. Next is the extremes and breakdowns, the inbetweens and the further inbetweens these parts help create the entirety of the motion.

Overlapping action and follow through;

Follow through typically depends on the movement of an extremity which can be:

• The actions of a character
• Extremities own weight and flexibility
• Air resistance

Like a Dog’s ear in the wind for example, as stated by Timing for animation by Harold Whitaker and John Halas.

I took the concepts discussed in the previous section and applied to my own work, this included a bouncing ball with a tail. To begin with I used the previous example of a bouncing ball and did squash and stretch, timing, easing in and out and Arcs but this time had a tail which involved having it sway in a direction opposite than the action happening with drag to help emphasis the idea of the tail being its own independent object compared to that of the character itself.

Similar to the bouncing ball example I believe there’s still some “float” when it comes to this which is most likely due to the spline not being adjusted enough and has been over easing going on to fix this it would need to be cleaned up with breaking tangents and removing keys that hindered the movement.

This is a breakdown of the process for this pose-to-pose of the Tom rig, when creating the movement for this I try and think about it broken down into stages, Firstly is the A key, typically the before action and then the B pose once these are established the anticipation of the action is next then the drag/breakdown, then an overshoot which can depend on how harsh I want the movement to be when it hits the B pose.

The posing and general silhouette of this is solid, I tried to keep everything as clear as possible however I believe his hand emerging from behind him needed to be cleaned up at tad as it snaps rather awkwardly into the next pose, adjusting the frames or his arm some might of given some help in fixing this issue.

The exaggeration throughout I believe helped make the final key overall solid, as it pushed the sadness of Tom. A concept that Richard William’s discusses in the survival kit is the idea of “breaking the Joints” which a lot of the time just involved having the character’s limbs not completely be stiff and follow the limits of real joints throughout and I try and use this concept as it helps with more cartoony characters. A similar idea to exaggeration as its pushing the limits of something for the sake of the animation looking good.

Squash and stretch in the eyes gave an interesting “zip” like eyes darting back and forth. Sometimes small details help with making something toony.

Another example of using the Tom rig for a Pose-to-pose exercise, this one involving Tom snapping. Similar to the previous example it has Tom posing from a chin rub to a double point then a snap, the idea being he’s pointing something out and then understands.

This time the focus was on exaggeration with the face controls and follow through/overlapping action of the ears, arcs are always important throughout these too, trying to make the arms/hips/face all follow an arc in a way that keeps the motion looking fluid.

The overall movement of this exercise is solid however a fixing of timing, might make the movement more snappy and less start/stop-like as right now it has a very stiff look to some of the movement and going through and cleaning that up would take some time to help smooth out the movement.