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Process: Dragons – Gift of the Night Fury (2011) (DVD Bonus) – The Cat Chasing His Tail
Process: Dragons – Gift of the Night Fury (2011) (DVD Bonus) – The Cat Chasing His Tail
2D Approach
Before approaching each shot, I first think about what process I should take.
I have a very organic approach to each shot I work on. Some shots benefit from video reference. Some rely more on body mechanics (to figure out timing, weight and balance), and others would need 2D drawovers to better plan out my poses and where I want my character/s to be compositionally (I love sketching over my shots in the computer). Some shots combine all three methods.
To the right are many different examples of shots I’ve worked on. Click one to view each step of my process.
From Project: Dragons: Gift of The Night Fury(2011 dvd holiday short)
Animating with primitives. There’s no better way to simplify your blocking process than to animate with a primitive. Before I start, I ignore the rotational values, and focus on the translations instead (tx, ty, and tz values). Think of this primitive to serve as the “upper body” motion of your character. Here’s the opportunity where you can get a nice first pass of the weight in your character and the texture in your timing.
I then begin sketching poses over the primitive to get a sense of secondary animation, shoulder/hips and a basic idea of what’s happening to my arms/legs/limbs/tails, how the character will rotate in space, and squash and stretch.
When I’m ready to begin full on blocking, I turn off anything I don’t need to animate (arms/legs/limbs/tails). I limit my focus to the head, shoulders (upper half of body), and hips (lower half). I then copy the translate values of the primitive to the shoulder control, and do a quick rotational blocking pass, adjust my rotations accordingly.
Once I have a good sense of my blocking and timing, I move down my hierarchy of limbs, turning each one on, doing a quick blocking pass thinking about silhouette, shape and form, then continue down my list until the character is completely blocked out on 4’s. Blocking on 4’s allows you to experiment, and allow for the time necessary to make quick changes.
Process: Dragons – Gift of the Night Fury (2011) (DVD Bonus) – The Cat Chasing His Tail
2D Approach
Before approaching each shot, I first think about what process I should take.
I have a very organic approach to each shot I work on. Some shots benefit from video reference. Some rely more on body mechanics (to figure out timing, weight and balance), and others would need 2D drawovers to better plan out my poses and where I want my character/s to be compositionally (I love sketching over my shots in the computer). Some shots combine all three methods.
To the right are many different examples of shots I’ve worked on. Click one to view each step of my process.
From Project: Dragons: Gift of The Night Fury (2011 dvd holiday short)