Blocking Animation

In industry, animation is normally blocked out first to put down the key poses and to get a sense of timing. If anything in the script was to change, this would be the ideal time to do it. II thought I would try out this method as before I was just keying the animation using the auto curve and adjusting it from there. Everyone has their own way of working but I thought I may as well try this technique out. Blocking gets across the idea and motion of the character easily, I have showed the rest of my group the below video to get feedback and before I change the curve from stepped to linear I will adjust a few things, such as slowing down the run cycle. I also need to add in some facial expressions, blinks and just general small things that will add to our characters personality.

When I go to change the curves to linear, I will be adding in extra key frames to smooth out the animation and maybe deleting any unnecessary ones. After it has been completed with linear curves, I will then take them to spline curves, this will be the last stage and hopefully the refinement of the animation where I will be adjusting things here and there.

The below video is the blocking animation, not all of it is there as our second character is just being finished off at the moment. To utilise our time the most efficiently, I have begun animating with a non textured model and environment. These are not needed for animation and it means everything is progressing and nothing is on hold. They eye texture is present however as I wasn't able to gauge the eye movement very well without having anything on the eye geometry.


A useful blog I came across awhile ago was, 'Animation Tips and Tricks' where professional animators give their insider tips. It's really helpful and gives you a good insight to the industry practice. One that I found was on blocking animation and why they do it within the industry, Animation Tips and Tricks. It gives the supervisors and directors a clear idea of what you are going to be doing and what is going on in the scene. One thing I haven't done, but will do in future is before I go in to blocking the animation I should really draw out thumbnails of each shot to give my ideas more grounding and stability. Looking at this blog and back at my blocking I realised in some places I could have not included as many key poses as it was clear what the intention was. This was my first go at it so there are still lots of things I can improve on, but at the end of the day it's a learning process.