Weight lift exercise

Hi there.
So between character design, storyboard and frustration, I decided to take time and do, what I really love to do: ANIMATION.
I actually havn't really tryed any of the known animation exercises, such as bouncing ball (just few for fun), lifting heavy box, and so on, so I thought I'd try that out.
I've been reading and studying animation, way more than actually animating, lately, so I figured an actual animation exercise would do me well.

First I did some video reference, of me lifting a somewhat heavy box. It's captured with my super awefull mobile video camera, so the quality is horrific. But it gives a good idea about broad posing and timing.



Next I choose the most important poses, and sketched those down on a piece of paper.
I havn't got a scanner with me, but once I'll have that, I'll scan it in for you.
Then it was basically just a matter of taking those poses, and put them into maya.
I roughly used the timing the video reference gave me, but as you might notice, the timing changed a bit from the reference, to the blocking and into the breakdowns - guess you could call that refinement ;)



Then it's time to do the breakdowns. This is - to me - the most difficult part. Going from the keys to the final animation is very hard. I struggle with keeping the life and snappyness throughout the breakdowns. I've really tried to work with as many breakdowns as possible to minimise the risk of floaty/bad computer inbetweens. I've keyed on every second frame, througout the first half of the animation, and it's pretty clear when it stops.

It's still a bit rough though, but once I get it refined and let the computer fill in the blank frames, it should be all smooth and nice.




So this is where I'm at now. Hopefully I'll find time to finish it, and add in breakdowns for the last half of the animation, get it refined and smoothed out.

So far I've worked about 5 hours on it... on and off, but with msn and facebook, that's a lot off ;)

Btw: the rig is from this dude named Jason Baskin. Make sure you check them out, they are AWESOME!
LINK TO HIGHEND3D

Cheers and have fun!