Part of the work we did for Week 2 involved creating a snowman out of primitives such as cubes, cylinders and circles. For our homework, we had to animate this snowman doing simple actions, such as lifting his hat and waving.
The task introduced us to an invaluable technique called parenting. Simply, we parented the various parts of the snowman together all the way down to the base of the snowman’s body, so that when it moved, the rest of the snowman moved with it.
By parenting each part, from the fingers to the hands and from the hands to the arms and from the arms to the body and so on, I was able to make it so that when one-part moves, the others move in tandem with it while also allowing them to move about on their own.
I made my snowman wave, hold its hat, and even fix it as he wobbled form side to side. Using knowledge on follow through and straight-ahead action, I was able to make an appealing animation for my snowman.
Snowman Blender Animation – YouTube