Posing Shaggy with his feet on the door

[robcat2075]

This was made to address one particular challenge in posing Shaggy in "the Door is Stuck" exercise... putting his feet on the door, leaning him back and yet getting his arms to reach the doorknob. However since there is no complete "Door is Stuck" video yet, it may also give others useful exposure to general Shaggy posing workflow and AM2001 Rig circumstances.

 

PosingShaggy_250.mov

 

the resulting PRJ: The_Door__s_Stuck_ShaggyAtDoor.prj

 

Note that I've posed Shaggy in this pose at frame 0:00. If you were really doing The Door is Stuck, this is not the pose you would start with.

[Rodney]

Here is something of an extension to Robert's Project file.

 

The attached Project file consists of 5 (very) rough poses.

These poses are not fully refined but form a starting place from which to work.

There are several things which you may find worthy of noting here:

 

- The Poses are set on Frames 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4

- The Chor length (in this instance) is set to 3 Seconds.

- Stretching these 5 poses out from 5 frames to the full 3 Seconds (90 frames) would have Shaggy moving but not 'animated'. This is the point where the ideas of animation really start to form and transform mere movement into motivated performance; character animation.

- Perfecting these (storytelling) Poses helps determine how the final animation will read. Proceeding on before these Poses are finalized will likely produce frustration, especially if anyone else has to work with the scene. For instance, if the hands aren't properly placed on the door handle... if the feet don't stay planted firmly in place. Smooth and effectively communicated animation begins here in the Blocking/Posing stage.

 

TaoA:M's earlier exercises deal with creating strong Poses that 'read' and yet those who work through TaoA:M often treat each exercise as completely separate, as if they have nothing to do with each other, when in fact they've set in place the building blocks with which to proceed.

 

At this stage it will be well worth the time to consider what will be moving and what should be steadfastly stuck into place. To my way of thinking these Contact Frames are critical to the scenes timing and therefore need your undivided attention and emphasis. Consider also where each item is coming from and where it will be going to in the scene. Rather importantly, these contacts form the timing of your animation. If you need to snyc your animation in any way (sound track, music, lipsyc, dancing to a beat, etc.) you'll be needing this.

 

If Poses and placement are the keys to effectively timing your animation (and they are... literally) how something moves from one place to another is the where the actual animation will be. It's the interpretation, interpolation and inbetweening (the spacing) of the scene.

 

A thought for your consideration: In traditional animation we could probably get away with having three keys but with CG it helps to have five in order to assist with our analysis during playback of the scene.

 

 

Note: At the last minute I adjusted the first frame of this project file (frame 0) to have both of Shaggy's feet on the door. Originally I had him posed with one foot planted on the ground and one on the door as if he was in the last stage of stepping up onto the door. My rationale for the last minute change is that it'd take Shaggy a lot more than three seconds to transition and then finish out the scene.

The_Door__s_Stuck_ShaggyAtDoor__5_Poses_.prj

[mouseman]

Really good discussion, with really good ways of thinking about the task, Rodney! I think you are effectively talking about creating the storyboard (minus text) within A:M, which will plan out the entire shot. I think I will base my approach for the upcoming "Rear Window" project on top of what you've written here. I probably should have been doing this all along, however!

 

The only difficulty I can foresee is when you have multiple characters and multiple chor actions, and you want to start adjusting the time between key frames, it requires visiting every chor action and dragging the keys over.