Hello all:
First of, let me just apologize for the delay, it's been hectic around here.
So, we left off at the first pass of the spline phase; a phase where you can see, read, and register all the action intended in the planing but what's really missing is the finesse, the details, the Zing and to be honest, finesse and attention to details make any animation worth watching. Any "OK" animator can get his animation to an acceptable/watchable point, but only those who put the time and the efforts into polishing their shots will shine.
I can't claim to be a good "polisher", in fact I struggle with it most of the time, and MANY times I end up over polishing my work which results in what I refer to as "losing life" or making it look too elastic and perfect, and I lose all my hard accents and the crisp timing I had intended earlier, so the main idea for polishing is to polish stuff and clean it but stay true to your blocking and planing, if it ain't broke don't fix it, just polish it.
The best way for polishing I believe is to work out chunks of your animation, so break down your shots to beats and polish these beats individually, stretch your timeline and work every 25-50 frames at a time, spend about 30 min per chunk and keep moving just so you bring up the whole piece to the same level of polish (You need to avoid favoring some parts over the rest, they're all your babies and you should love them equally) and do the same process again and again until you're happy with the result. here's my first polish pass.
So you may have noticed the minimal changes in the hands, arms and feet but there were way more details that I wanted to add, and there were even more stuff that I wanted to change entirely, like the landing pose on 00:23, it always bugged me and when I told the directors that I wasn't happy with that they said "make lash like a whip" to which I responded "really?" and they said "Yup!" so I did it and they loved it. So back to polishing, keep in mind I'm still polishing the shot and one important part of this shot is the book performance so here's the shot with the book and I'll talk about it after you watch it.
So in the the initial planing the book was supposed to be in frame already hanging on the shingles then Morris hits the house and spins it 360. Notice the details I added, the tie is animated now, Morris sways more around 00:09 before he charges to get the book, Morris forms figure 8 with his arms at 00:13 to balance himself out, and notice the rocking motion on the house now, even the house is more effected by Morris' action at this point.
And here's the last revision on the shot, the directors wanted the book to come in later in the shot to accommodate the action in the previous shot.
I added simple work on the facial animation and got the "SHIP IT!"
This conclude my post on the house shot. I am so glad I did this and so glad it had a good reception from a lot of people. If you have any comment or question, please do not hesitate.
Regards,
JL
