Splinter Roll

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Splinter Roll

Over the past number of months I have been working on a number of short animations exploring body mechanics. Three areas I wanted to explore was The Roll, The Swing and The Pull. This is The Roll.

With a limit of 200 frames at 24 fps, it comes to just over 8 seconds, and so to tell a story - that is something with a beginning, middle and end with goal purpose or contrast (in this shot going from screen left to screen right) - in such a short amount of time was quite a challenge.

Also this is the first time I have worked in Maya for 5 years, I currently work in 3Ds Max on a day to day basis, so jumping from one package to another was a bit of a shock to the system!

This piece took me four weeks of evenings (all done outside of my 9-5 work hours), each week working on a new phase of the animation as described below. I would like to thank all those who gave me great feedback, including my mentor Guido Muzzarelli.

The Stuart and Stan rigs are courtesy of AnimationMentor.com.

MAKING OF...

Week01 - Preparation and Reference

The first phase on animation is all done before you touch the 3D software. This is the planning phase, including thumbnail sketches and filmed video reference. I gathered a lot of great reference for this piece - the walks and rolls - but they are only required to influence poses and some timing - animation, especially this cartoony style - is meant to be creative, so the reference is something to be drawn from, but not stuck to frame by frame.

With a limit of 200 frames, and to portray the feeling of dynamic timing, I cut together my reference and remapped the time to fit my plan.

Week02 - Blocking

During the 2nd week I worked on the blocking of the piece, which I started in stepped mode to create clear poses for my character. This pass is presented in splined mode, and looks jerky and glitchy, but that's what happens in the blocking phase!

Week03 - Refining

During the 3rd week I refined the blocking, including the timing, spacing and poses used. I also added a whole new bath of inbetweens to truely sell the movements and ideas communicated.

Week04 - Polishing and Final Render

The polishing phase is there to make the animation look sexy. Tidying up any strange details, adding the finger movements and all that more minute detail.