Animation Project: Body Mechanics - Part 1

 Animation Project - Body Mechanics

Part 1 - Blocking Phase

May 2021

 My latest animation project will demonstrate and help my practice of body mechanics. I have chosen a dance sequence to base my animation on for key poses and flow. Throughout this process, I hope to hone my skills and gain a better understanding of dynamic movements for full-body animations. This first progress report has taken me through about a week's worth of work, 2-3 hours per day.

 

This initial phase is strictly blocking, and what I have to present today is about a third of the intended length of animation. I tried to keep to as few but crucial key poses as possible in matching the source material. I started with just the center of gravity, spine, head, and feet movements, in order to get the most important shapes of the body down. I then moved on to the arms and hands, plus shoulders. Next I will move to the fingers, and after that the in-between poses wherever they may be needed. I have yet to adjust the timing of animation to the corresponding audio, but will do so once I begin the next phase. The source material has repeating motions, so I plan to copy the key poses, but alter them to make each phase unique in the future. Otherwise, the process has gone very well, and I am excited to move forward.

 

 Source video:

 MYLEE Dance Workout - Levitating

timecode  0:27 - 0:57

So far, no hardships getting the motions and poses I'm looking for. I am, however, sticking very close to the key poses. I intend to stretch the rig to more extreme poses in order to convey more dynamic motion later on. For now, matching the poses gets the job done. It will depend on how it looks once I begin to ease into spline.