This week was more focused on breaking everything down to bear key frames so we could clearly see the line of action during our weightlifting. The idea behind the line of action is related to the animation priceable of appeal because if the poses aren’t interesting why would you want to watch it in the first place. I did find an interesting point made by your tuber called “love life Drawing” where he goes into how and when to use the line of action in more of a traditional sense. He stated that when you use a line of action when drawing you can create a really strong dynamic pose but, due to it being a bit vague, which depends on the line which can leave the pose being a bit stiff. He also gave it a way to fix this by putting your pose between the reference and the line and finding the middle ground which will allow you to exert the pose as a whole.
The first task of the day was to do a bit of life drawing in groups of five where one person would hold the box, and the others would try and find the line of action within the poses. This was also a good warm up for the next stage of the task which was to break down each pose within a reference video and try and capture each key pose along with the line of action within that pose. This started off with me looking for the key poses. This included any arm movements or dramatic poses the person made during the lift after I marked each of them down with a simple line of action.
The next step was to create all the little struggles and mannerisms the person was making the way he swung his arm at the start. This was simple enough to implement with it just being added in a few spheres to represent the arms. I could not add any shaking to the knees due to the exercise just being to capture key movements and as those were a bit more stubble movements, I could not really capture it to its full extent.
The next task of the afternoon was to polish a weight lift Alec had done before had. This was to teach us how to add little details like limbs staring and how to work with the child of restraint in an actual weight lift. This was a very simple task, but I’m happy with how it turns out with me adding some overshot to the ball and in the torso on the way up and I’m particularly proud of the way the limbs shake on the initial lift.
For my story boards I decided to go ahead with the sword idea as the perspective of the and overall shapes of the arow lift did not work and at the end of the day it looked more like a pull than an actual lift even when put into the right pose with perspective. I also got some advice from Joe and Alec to instead of throwing the sword up the character will hold it in the heroic pose but lose their balance which I thought would be funny so I took their advice and looked as some videos on how to portray off balance properly along with implanting the Chanie principle did for the scarf as it would come in useful for something like this.
For my submission piece, I looked at the reference I did earlier last week and blocked out the line of action first along with the sword and rock. This was down to me wanting to test the composition of my animation which also acts to get a sense of the size everything needed to be as I would be using a bit of perspective within the piece. For the poses did not for the lift section of my animation this in a way gave me a better sense of how I needed to position the character in the animation.
Then, taking some advice from the Thursday morning class, I blocked out each key pose’s timing by leaving in a good few frames for key poses. This will help me when it comes to the weight of everything in the piece. This comes down to the more room between key poses, which means poses, which means more frames of animation making those spaces move slower so I can really get any struggle in as well as reparenting weight and force within those moments. This will also in my option keep any stubble movements or mannerisms my character does smooth a quick and give more time to the main point of the animation.
Overall, mi ok with how the animation is going, though I do regret not leaving enough space for a face on the character. I do think having a pair of eyes or even a mouth would help sell some of the actions in the animation along with some much need personality. I do think I am going to add in a unibrow and some dot eyes as a bit of a test when all through frames are in the animation due to still being at the blocking stage some, there’s still time to think about it. I am also pleased with how I implemented the advice for the balancing segment of my animation and how it is going to add some interesting movements into the animation. This will also open the door to representing weight in a unique way within the animation, which does sound interesting. Though I need to be careful not to spend so much time on that part when the lift is the focus of the piece.
