This Santa animation was done extra-fast as a test of using PoseMan as an animation tool for a.. ehm.. different kind of animation... nothing revolutionary, just a different approach to animating, for me, and a different end result too. I want to do more stuff in this style, because it's insane fun. I got the idea while working on a 2D project with rough animation. It was rough because there was a lot of it, but it turned out kind of nice. All the time, while working on this project, I kept feeling like I need to detail the animation more and make it smoother, but there was no time for that, so I did all that I could to make things move nicely and feel alive and look good, with a limited amount of drawings. Same here, in this test. It's been considered, traditionally, that 3D animation has to be in constant movement to be kept "alive", that you can't use holds, you use moving holds... or else the character will look dead like a statue. But at the same time, if you look at a detailed blocking, on stepped, it can feel quite alive and sometimes more graphically interesting, because each pose is carefully shaped, no inbetweens. The old masters were basically saying the same thing about the animation "on twos", that it looks and feels better. OK, this here test is kind of rough and messy, but sort of cute too... I think... :P It's not exactly masterful animation "on twos", but rather a proof, for me, that I can do superfast animation like this. In this case, I had the rig already, I spent probably 20 minutes or so saving a bunch of poses in PoseMan (I only used a few here), and then I used PoseMan to animate pose to pose. In something like 10 minutes I was done with the body animation, and then I detailed a bit of stuff here and there... ehm... yeah, a second pass... let's say 10 more minutes or so. But the body animation was really done superfast. Some of the inbetweens are blends calculated by PoseMan. Basically, it's the same thing I've been doing (and not only me, of course) in 2D: pose A, pose B, one inbetween favoring ether A or B. That would be the simple recipe, but it can be used in very fancy ways (there's probably nothing I dread more in animation that the old pose zzzip pose zzip pose, etc). A cheap, fast, and cheated way of animating that's quite effective. Also, to continue, a cute or interesting model can make or break animation. People love watching the old Disney cartoons not only because there was beautiful and natural movement added to those drawings, but, I think, even more so because the drawings themselves were appealing and the final result was composed of beautiful images. Anyway, bunch of theory here, but I'm curious what other people feel about this... sort of stop-mo-like, stepped, pseudo-blocking animation. I want to animate a short film with this technique and we'll see... I'm sure this choppy thing makes more sense with a good story behind, and in the larger context of a film. Enjoy for now my weird freestyle Santa! :D
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About me
I'm a character animator, visual artist, game dev, and music composer. I like to doodle, write, experiment, and plan my next big thing. I love tech that inspires and enables art. I have a formal background in music composition. And I like to walk around the world and see things up close. Archives
February 2022
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