Week 2 - Idle/Breathing Pose

Following from week 1, I got critique on my idle pose. I found I had made a few mistakes with the animation. I added in many keyframes to the animation when in reality it only needs 4 or 5 keyframes to get a smooth animation. This meant that it actually became harder to get a smooth animation. They also commented on the timing of the animation. Whilst it was semi-realistic compared to a real human, I got given the advice of exaggerating the animation, to make it more interesting and obvious as to what he was doing. I also decided that if it was going to be a super strong superhero, he needed more character, to give off the feeling of cockiness to the audience.

Because of all these points, I decided to start fresh. First thing I did was make the base pose for him more interesting and cocky. I ended up giving him a bit more swagger by making him put his weight on one side of his body and resting his hand on his hip. This gives him the appearance of someone holding them self very confidently.

The Cocky Pose

From here, I started working on the animation. I was more specific with where I put my keyframes this time around. I also decided to look at the model itself to see what I actually needed to animate for this. I decided to animate his hips, shoulders and head. These three were the only areas that needed animating due to the nature of the hips and shoulders moving the majority of the body from their controllers. Keyframes were put in only 3 places, the start, middle and end. He starts in a breathing out pose, breaths in for half the animation, then breaths out. I need to sort the specifics out but it's nearly done and coming together well.