(Class 2) Week 6 Animation Mentor - Psychology of Body Mechanics

Hello Fellow Animators,

Ok so into week six we go! This week for me, was all about adding in more break down and turning things into spline. However I think I hit a snag this week, as I was having trouble figuring out the movement of the head, which you will see in the video :). So I tried doing something unique but it turns out it wasn't quite selling it with Dana. Basically when I have Stewie turn around to walk the other direction I have his head swing around, and because his head is so Big! It didn't look convincing or possible, and in many cases it looked like he would fall over easy.

The Second Dana mentioned was the head movement, they rotating up and down way too much, to the point where its not humanly possible, and I cam definitely see that once she mentioned it, man I wish I had eyes like that :). She mentions that the head yes should has no focus because he is drunk, but the problem was I made him too unfocused, and there should still be a hint of focus throughout the animation. So she showed us that there is actually a control switch you can turn on and off on the Stewie rig, that stops the head from rotating accordingly to the shoulder movements, kinda wish I knew about this earlier, but with mistakes we learn a lot :).

The third thing that Dana, mentioned was the way he got up from the bench, it was again not humanly possible to get up like that, it very strange when I first did it I thought it was fine, but now that Dana has mentioned it, it was so obvious! Again man I guess to see these things takes experience and understanding, again another lessons learnt, "If you can do it in the real world" chances are its not going to look convincing in the animated world no matter how cartoony.

So this week was pretty hardcore, I had a little too many mistakes that I will have to clean up for the next week. I have to say animation is not easy, and the joy of animating can be extremes! One minute the director will love where you are going, and you feel like you are on top of the world, the next minute you find out that is not there at all and you feel like your heart has been ripped out of your chest, I guess its part of it, and I think this course gets their student into that frame of mind before getting into the industry.

Cheers and see you next week,
Meng.