Blender Animation - Sprite Fright on Ice

hello can you guys hear me all right hello are we live i think so hey guys what is going on our first animation live stream my name is rick i was the life the life the lead animator on sprite fright and today would love to uh yeah to do some animation live which is uh exciting um let me show you guys what i have in mind here so since we're entering winter time in the netherlands i decided to go a little bit into a christmas slash winter theme here and have our character rex from sprite fright and do a little animation with him so um let's see so we do have a little christmasy santa hat going on and i put on some ice skates for him so what we're gonna do we're gonna have some fun with rex animating on ice um so what is the plan here let me show you guys i did a little sketch a thumbnail so what we're go where we're after here because i already saw in the comments that somebody was asking for video reference if we're going to use that for this type of animation it's going to be very cartoony very pushed i want to have fun with with the stylized character and instead of shooting reference which is i tend to use shooting reference more for subtle animation very much acting um so for this i decided to actually do some thumbnailing and thumbnailing or sketching in blender is great because you can already animate so let me show you guys and turn off rex what is the plan here so we have rex coming into screen do a nice pirouette and get out of there so i keep this animation fairly condensed uh due to the time frame i hope to you know do a two hour maybe a little longer uh stream and show you guys what uh well yeah how how i work what kind of workflow i use and it as i said like it really depends on the shot this shot is very body mechanic driven and but but with the grease pencil tool it it already you know gives you a nice sense of timing and you know even though it's super roughly drawn i'm very much looking for the energy instead of you know drawing in all the details because that's not what i'm after i just want to make sure that the main beats are fairly clear so rex comes into screen here does a half a turn hangs a little bit in the air comes down does a little bit of an antique anticipation go up this is the pirouette and the pirouette as you can see i just drew a line with some scribbling and [Music] i want to stylize that too in the animation so see if we can maybe add some grease pencil to that as well and then come down and get out of screen there so that's the plan um let me take a look if there's any questions guys i try to check the chat yeah on a regular basis uh i'll point out once i start blocking out i might need some time to actually make something and then in between we'll uh yeah we'll hope to answer some of you uh your questions so great all right now first off before i start animating i would like to set up some settings on rex um so let me turn on rex turn off the animation sketch here and as you can see this is this is the uh the camera view i make sure that it's locked so i don't have this function enabled and so i can easily like zoom in without losing my camera position and i can easily switch to a user perspective here now how i treat like animation like this is very much go back to to the core of the of the body [Music] mass that doesn't make any sense basically a bouncing ball okay if you look at the uh the sketch that i did it's going up and down and it it's all about the timing of the of the body here so um let's take a look at some settings on the rig here first off i make sure that the rig is as fast as possible so the quality is set to to performance which is zero i can here subdivide it if i want to have a more smooth preview and also make sure that the simplify is all set to zero all for real-time performance so it's buttery smooth um now for the la fes i uh wanted to just add some expressions so this comes with the new blender 3.0 where uh the asset browser also supports a post library so let's uh add some you know i would say you know rex is very much into ice skating nobody knows but he is a very nice looking guy give him a little bit of a smile here are you that's a bit angry let me there we go just slide that in there get a little wider here here we go by the way i'm using a wacom tablet for if you were wondering and also this is something i really you know this is a habit just to have those highlights not in the middle it looks a bit like a deer looking into car lights so let me just push them a little bit to the side here like that and then what i'm going to do is um mainly focus on on the body as for now and work with the the fk controls on on the arms so any ik controls you know any stuff that i don't need for this animation i basically just hide you know um you could do it in the actually the cloud rig layers but we're using ik feet and fk hands or fk upper body parts so that's why i tend to you just mentally manually turn it off for the chest here i'm using the ik chest and so all of this fk stuff can just go as well i just want to make my life simple basically now this is this is a force fk ik sorry so turn these guys off there's probably probably a faster way to do this but hey guys i just started animating in blender last year wait a second is that last year yeah like last year in november i started working at blender and uh so far i'm i'm digging it um and yeah i'm looking forward to to continue animating and improving the tools if necessary um let's see shoulders this one i do use for the arms if we go to some of the settings here i make sure the eyes are parented to the head so whenever i rotate my head around you know it's following uh it's following the head um and this is just because you know this animation doesn't require any proper eye direction honestly so um let's get animated um i'm gonna turn off everything here as you can see still there skates are visible because they're they're actually a prop that i made myself um and this is what we're going to animate so let's go back to the perspective view and turn on the sketch also yeah i'm i'm not sure if this is a common thing but i do animate with this gizmo thing it's just uh i'm coming from maya i admit so um some things that i i'm used to do i do occasionally use a g r and s to you know do some specific uh manipulation but um this is something i'd like to animate with so let's go back to our test here and this is the rough idea and i'm basically i'm not going to rotoscope my own idea i try to you know be free and not stick too much to any of this because i feel like we could push it even more so let's get started so there's the control here uh let's make a new action actually let's just set a key yeah because then it will actually give me well it's not not the proper naming at the show sprite fight we use annie a and i for uh our animation actions and then the name of the um character and then dot anime or whatever version zero zero one there we go and let's get started so by the way i am animating on um on stepped at the moment i'm going to block stuff out in stepped and see how far we can get with the actual uh stream if we can get to proper splining but yeah let's um let me check the chat for a second and then i'll um i'll go on and block in some poses see what uh what works and what doesn't and then we'll talk later let's see screencast keys so guys as you all know the first stream uh was an hour ago and i apologize that that happened uh we kind of switched to a different setup here so and this is my first stream so i do see a couple of people let's say can you enable screencast keys and i am not sure how to do that i am sorry wait a second do i i can try for a second here let me nah i'm sorry guys next time i'll make sure that this screencast keys is turned on and this is not pre-recorded do you expect to finish it today i i cannot promise that let me try let me try challenge accepted okay and what else do we have um [Music] all right thoughts on the cloud rig yeah this is still in development i do like the cloud rig setup uh as in like it's continuously being improved by by demeter or rigger here and i'm actually i was actually able to to build some bricks myself and try out some some some rick building with the cloud rig system and yeah it works works very cool very well [Music] but uh right here we're now animating i let me get started all right let me get started no more talking let's do it so from the start [Music] as i said i have my key preferences set to constant and just to to be able to see my blocking and what i'm doing here all right so i'm now animating actually those let me put those legs into fk here so we're we're not even seeing them but then at least they're not sticking around all right so just for my brain i like to start on even numbers here oh i need to actually one second there we go okay so i start on frame two you know and then get in those even numbers just for blocking because it's very easy to block on fours or on eights whatever and then work the inbetweens which will be always be on the on the even numbers so all right let's get started and i'm just you know if any of you guys have watched my uh read the article about the animation tips on the blender cloud website one of them is animate drunk polish sober and that's what i'm going to do now without beer it's going to be just you know me playing around with the rig and see what comes out so here we go so we come into screen here roughly around there and then go here we go down there's a little bit of a down movement here so i'd like to plan that a little bit further here you know and this is probably way more down when i turn on the feet but adjusting it later on is pretty easy we go up do the turn oh like there look at that bad boy into camera up and then we jump up right here rotate it even further around hang it in there i'm not gonna frame or frame this by the way let me just get to the point around there we made a pretty much a 180 degree jump it's a little stuck stuck there so and then go down around here like that then it it swooshes it really has a quick action going on and it's basically weight shifting as you can see on the sketch it's the full weight is on this foot right here and then it switches over to the other foot and then it pushes off on that leg so so we really go down here that and as you can see i don't you know it's just getting some keys in there honestly don't overthink this because i you know i did think about it and that's where the sketch comes from so i i do have my handles to like where is it going i'm not like going in into straight ahead animation i do you know but at least you get something to work with you need those pillars to kind of start building off so so we go down we go up and then there's the question like which way do we turn and i would love to actually turn the other way so we go like here go up we go up a little later like that i don't worry about the turning right now let me just get the position in there oh there's probably a lot of questions uh about my keying setup i haven't mentioned that i'd like to key everything automatically so automation is on right here and for the keying i have the location rotation and scale because basically everything everything that has to be i don't want to think about every time i set a key to like oh this is a location oh this is rotation so i just want to animate drunk don't think about the details so that's what i'm doing going up and i'm not worrying too much about the rotation yet i just want to get the position in there and already kind of you know it's probably and then it's going down so let's let's hold it for a little longer there and i probably want to probably want to end yeah so this is where we go down and i do want to end up with the face looking to the left and it's coming down and turn turn his body around it's like playing with lego man that's all it is playing with lego puppet and you know and then he's coming out of getting out of the screen here let him jump up again and then he's skating away again okay and one more okay let's see what we got right out of the gate turn off this sketch here okay all right all right right going down so what i'm now looking at there's a little bit of a stair step and i want this curve to be it's going like straight and then up again a little bit so let's make this curve a little bit uh so it's coming up going up going up even more and it's going down and you do see a little bit of a space switch here and you know if you guys are asking do you use motion trill i don't not because i don't know how to use it i do but uh i i just wanna i'm not in at the stage where i just want to be very nitpicky about it okay that end part feels a bit fast here so let me actually get this one in here so if you are joining the stream right now you think like what is this limbless guy doing i'm following the animation sketch which is this guy right here that's what i'm doing just just so you know okay all right now for the turn let's see go a little bit more there this switch also feels a bit fast but we'll we'll figure it out one feature i want to discuss that i use since 3.0 is the blend to neighbor feature instead of the regular breakdowner so i turn on the shortcut for the actual breakdowner and switch it to the the blender neighbor feature which is let me quickly show you where you can find find it [Music] go to key map and search to blend to neighbor it's right here the post blend to neighbor shift e and it's fantastic so if i go within two keys and i hit shift e it kind of blends between two keys instead of picking the exact 50 between keys all right so um this is something i can work with um and let me you know put in some some rough poses on on the actual uh on racks here so it does have a swoop here goes up i think ultimately we can you know we have quite a bit of head space we can push it up even more and let's uh in let's add some some rotation here for the um for the twist so that part is what i'm going to animate on twos and then eventually we need to offset the rotation here let's see how that works so i go up here so we switch and then already on this turn oh man let me actually go into perspective mode by the way i'm used to a two screen setup i'm very spoiled where on one screen i have my camera view my other screen i'm animating so switching like this is a bit unprecedented territory for me but i think we'll manage so go up rotate around like this then it's snapping back so we do go here it snaps back even more we'll look at the curves later on so it's going this way this way i tend to not go into um full 180s because that that reads like 180 rotations on the blocking and ultimately you do want to end up with so now it's just one one spin here and we can adjust that later so let me actually switch to i think it's the y rotation is it not let me check i'm always confused by the um i think so is it oh it's a gimbal of course so it's i see we're working with a a gimbal here it doesn't animate on one on one axis so for these rigs i uh i found out before um before uh animating on sprite right that having two root controls is actually pretty handy for these kind of twists we kind of need to muscle it through to get the spins working because normally you would animate the location on this jump on one control and then your rotation will be a clean um a clean curve so now it's like finding out every single bone here but that's we got to work with the rig what what is here so let's see so yeah as you can see this is a perfect 180 degree turn and i tend to you know push that a little bit further and then right here even more like that and then it probably will switch around so actually let's see so let's jump up turns around i want this to be faster so let's go even far further like that let's see like that yeah this is a moment where i feel like ah wait a second i need to because we're turning around into this full i would say a double spin so this part right here would probably flip back um when you spline it so but ultimately you know this is the stuff that can be figured out once we once we actually spot spline it let's put in some extra poses here because we're looking at this model right here let's see in the chat what do we have yes this will be available to watch after the stream okay all right hey demeter how are you um let me actually put on some body poses here um so oh i need to switch the mouse here like this and that will also give us a bit more info on the the whole the whole um flow of the the actual animation so let me turn off the legs here and the arms so first off let's pose this guy into ice skating guy here um turn on ik feed there we go wait a second where's my oh i did i didn't turn it on and let's put on his little center hat too all right great now first hand same thing i do want to look at something a bit more organic so i just slap on a you know something a bit more relaxed and we can change that later and do the same thing for the other side here we go all right now actually this is the point where i really need to see my camera view so i'm gonna expand my screen here sorry it's gonna get a little small here but just to you know i need to see my my actual camera view because this is ultimately what you know what's going to get rendered or you know exported so this is the most important thing so actually let me turn off this here and then it's a bit cramped i'm sorry but i need to see what i'm doing like that so on this first frame i'm gonna post the body and one more thing i want to let me see yes i do want to actually turn on the hinge attribute on the head so the head will be not rotating together with the body that will be on the fk settings here so now the head is actually not rotating with uh with the body so when i turn will actually stay stay where it's at it does follow the location but it doesn't do the rotation all right so let's get some posing in here i can actually turn off the gizmo right here that and you know while you're posing you're exploring also a little bit like what does look appealing and what doesn't uh one more thing i want to set as i see this now is that the pole vectors i do want to make them follow the the legs as well and that is something pull follow right here there we go so now when i rotate my um my feet around the ball will actually follow that too if you do rotate it too far down it will flip but ah it stays pretty well great rigging man great rigging demeter um all right so i don't you know with skating this is not going to be the most accurate skating of all time hey we're working with animation here we can be a little bit deliberate and there we go so now all the controls that are visible i just want to set a key right where where the um where the keys are where i blocked the thing out so as you can see it will not it'll probably um so the feed will probably adjust uh let's see so we go down here actually this is the down position so this is where i want to actually move this one forward and it's actually coming in like that and then the other feet here joining two it's coming in like that and then it does that little jump there i already want to anticipate with some of the body rotation here and i'll go a little bit back and forth and also the head of course so why do i not have the head on [Music] on the body orientation i like the body space i i tend to really control that um so we go down here go up and that's where we kind of lift off so probably you need we need to go a bit higher and there you see like foot is getting twisted there so we do turn around which means that this foot is actually again you know we'll move things up a little bit here just to get that jump as you can see it's it's not quite far up and we do have some headspace here so let's just move the move the body up here and then probably here same thing so like that there's a jump here and then it sets back on the other side actually i'm not worrying too much about the head here sorry guys let me just set this back for readability purposes jump and then let's go to the so this is the the key that we set to high higher up the the body here and we do want to have a slight arc to it so let's also move this up right here and then you see quite a big jump here into the x direction which is probably shown right here wait a second what are we looking at this is c am i working in z now all right we're working in z wait a second i'm you know what i always get confused by the the axes when you're in post mode versus being in object mode in post mode the y location is up and in object mode it's c obviously so that's really throwing me off every single time but it doesn't matter it's all fairly relative so let's see actually bring this back a little bit so going up going down quite far there that coming down and i do want to stretch this one so give it a bit more height there and then going down going down switching around it does you know what in my head i already have planned where the feed will be so it's a bit hard to like explain why i'm now working with this like feed hanging around but i you know you could say like when you're in the air switch to fk but it depends on the situation really like sometimes i tend to switch to fk when i really want to probably the spin might be a good moment where i actually go into into fk legs just to to be able to follow them nicely but uh going up here and then we will land with the other foot so this one here so go turn this one around rotate it even more like that oh do i miss a frame now okay so this is a moment where i basically go for the blender neighbor push it a bit further and then go down and i do want this moment to be a straight straight leg so the probabilities i want to adjust the height even more so going up then this foot will follow you know like that going up a bit more and then what i want for the landing is not to have them land the same time so we do that switch you could say like on this moment here to have this foot drag as well a little bit more a little bit more like that you know and then it comes up like that and this is stuff you know he tried to explore some some ideas and and every for me at least every animation has a certain part that's planning and a certain part that's kind of discovering ideas discovering like new movements and see what works and tweak tweak things around so that's why i don't go too much too deep into this rotation part because it's a pretty specific thing and i want to you know leave that for for um for later i just postpone my problems it's going to be fine so go down here i do want to stretch that one so probably on this pose i just you know push it up a little bit there and then we go way down probably too much down but let's see how this is feeling and then it makes a big scoop so and here yeah i do want to go up a little bit here it's a bit far down now for this foot let me actually put it here so it goes down up look at that look at this olympic ice skater beautiful let me go back to some questions here yeah um let's go over the chat here um [Music] what add-on are you using for animation um right now do i use add-ons i mean i do have some add-ons installed i have let's see oh actually i need to click here first and then i do have the animate add-on but i'm not using it that much simply because i'm mostly working in the viewport i would love to have the blend neighbor function working on both things i do find it very helpful occasionally but i wish it was more of an overarching tool where you can implement it into the viewport or the graph editor uh both so um what else do i use um i do have the lattice magic which is a plugin made by demeter if we have time we might go into that um but let's see how far we can get [Music] but other than that it's really pretty much you know plain blender are you using the pose library as i showed earlier just to get some initial posing in there for this body mechanics part it's not much help to have poses in there only four hands and the face so there's a pose from the pose library actually on the face right here but that's just him looking dopey dope all right where are we this is blender three yes it is um great cloud rig is it a plug-in i think it's it is it is part of the riggify add-on where you can implement the cloud rig as an extension of that amateur knows more about that when you download the rigs it will be included i believe so you will have this ui in there and yeah there's more in-depth information on that um all right let me see is there anything else are you doing keep poses i am animating drunk at the moment so i try to animate as fast as i can which is you know a trade-off so i won't be as yeah what would i say sophisticated in terms of like what i'm doing here i try to have fun and show you a bit of you know my workflow when i need to animate something very fast so let's uh let's continue here and actually i don't need the face so let's turn that off too okay tick and then i want to make that turn to the other side and i think we're a little low but i'm just so right here i do want to have this foot already exceeding the other foot and i'm it's so hard to explain like where how do you know where to put these feet and it's a little bit trial and error and like see what works uh this you could you could grow the scope or like use tons of reference to get this right but for this because it's so actually i do want to switch it around i can't say i'm a professional ice skater i'm not but this is more of a gut feeling kind of a thing and doesn't it look nice i mean uh um so this one is a bit too low here let me so we do switch around and on this pose right here it's already turning this foot right right there so that's where so it's kind of dragging a little bit behind there and then it goes for the for the jump i didn't even pose the hands but you already like with one pose you can feel a little bit what it could be and that's the turn sleeve at me look at his legs leaving behind um so it it ends up for the rotation and actually on this point i would would have his head already kind of turn into the spin but we're not worrying too much about that right now so [Music] just wondering just just you know playing a bit with the with the uh general uh controls the general mechanics here so on the spin i do want to straighten up his leg or his his spine there even here i think i do want to straighten that a little bit and it turns around when we come into screen i'm going a little bit over all over the place here but hey it's like going and then on the antique a little bit more down go up i want to straighten that what i want to achieve also is contrast with my posing so i try to already get some ideas in there of making uh a c-shape here and then when we push up we get more of a straight and then right here we could actually go over first a little bit more and then right here we go back to the other way around so it's like that and then right here same thing so we go straight curve backwards curve forward and then boom right let's let's continue on those feet and actually do a space switch just to you know have that in there too when do we space switch um i mean obviously when when there's interaction with with an object but also on this point it's it's uh it's nice to have the um the feet actually follow the body because they're not attached to anything whenever there's an attachment i tend to use ik when there's no attachment onto an object onto a wall or a floor i use ik fk sorry forward kinematics so for the arms i use fk here because they're not touching anything other than air and then so when we jump up here this would be a nice moment to actually switch to okay fk wow here we go so if you make this bigger you see that it actually has the naming there and because it's all stacked it doesn't blend so i can just put this too there we go and now whoo it's turning around and then when we go down again right here we do want to switch it so oop it switches on the jump stay on fk and then right right around here we switch back to ik again so and you can see of course so for that plan to happen you could you could also um and now actually i showed myself in the foot here because i hid those fk controls that's a bummer and let's see what do we do we have some fk secondary nope okay then i guess we just turn on those bones again i mean which is fine just make sure because there are no keys on it i mean yeah it's just me for my sanity you know key them on on this frame right here there's already oh wait i've selected the route that one there we go all right okay now with fk we're kind of blending a bit between i do still find this jump a little too low i want to push it a bit more and so let's go back to and this you can clearly see like the jumps right here then it's going up so this is basically your yeah your y location which is what it is uh let's push it up here so we go up let this guy fly great all right now i what i was looking after is to actually being able to kind of let his feet um rotate down a little bit there and then on this frame we actually bind them together a bit more and just to create a little bit more of a dynamic posing have this foot being bent a little bit there ultimately you know this stuff i'd like to push this even more for now and then here we're going to actually switch back but i'll leave that for once we've actually made the twirl uh more more advanced or like more detailed um all right soon let me actually not look at that last part yes so it's not distracting so yeah right around forty-five [Music] still want to have a little bit of bent and then straighten it up here and as you see right now when it's jumping when rex is jumping up so there's the the the front puts it the left leg is actually scooting back a little bit so it has this big motion to the right and then suddenly scoot back so what i want to do is kind of make it make sure that it's actually make like complete its trajectory before it's jumping up so you don't have that like going fast forward and then backwards again so right here i basically you know just move it back a little bit so now when it jumps it actually lifts off right at the place where it's like that okay so let's actually go for look at the spin here so right here we're spinning counterclockwise and the main motion is going to be initiated by the body so the body the upper body will actually rotate oh this way around now for the hands i want those hands to be nice and tight to the body because right now it's it's it's not clean as you can see so let's work on this pose because this is a very important part where the pose needs to be pretty clear so right here i want a clean pose i already want that rotation to be you know i want the post to already accentuate the rotation there so i kind of it's like i'm thinking of a screwdriver so this is something i want to try out so it's rotating counterclockwise so the arms are basically dragging out behind a little bit but also um yeah make that so like like it's actually i don't mind any intersections i will fix later and right here same thing like there's that uh like if you rotate something more than 80 degrees or slightly to 80 degrees it might feel like it's a pop or like it's very hard to read especially in blocking so for blocking i tend to this is this is not i'm not happy with this part so let's let's kind of redo that you know if you feel like man this is not it so this the whole thing will will refactor refactor um also for those legs i do want those legs actually i'm you know trying some things out here let's make them nice and clean here i'll go back into it into the chat in a second okay yes let me try this thing out here so they're intersecting i don't mind so this let me do oh is it a key and now i actually want to work on that rotation a little bit but let's jump on to the chat legit hardware specs i think it's in the descriptions description and if it's not it will be there which keyframe interpolation mode are you using i'm currently in constant or are you talking about the actual um interpolation as in the handle type i mean that doesn't matter it's constant so uh what else hello hi hi hello are the key frames on hold it's relation so it looks like no it's just blocking this is blocking pass so later on we'll we'll explain this how many frames per second is this um now i'm working on 24 frames per second mainly because this is traditionally the frame rate for movies if you work for game animation it might be 60 but we'll make our lives easier what else how would you fix something like that later good question man that's all about fixing problems i guess no i i you know watch we'll fix it it's you know um i find doing an animation shot and this is a bit different all right i'm kind of making decisions as i go as fast as possible normally i would take a bit more time and and think about it um now uh but but i've animated quite quite some years now and i kind of trusted myself that however i screw it up i managed to fix it so yeah it's like trust gained by experience i guess so and that's something you it's actually something i would recommend to be confident that it's it will be looking all right that sounds weird and very magical but it's not but you got to go through those hard yeah hard keys i would say and especially when we go into splining which i'm not sure maybe we will do some spinning today when you go from your stab blocking to spline interpolation yeah that's where stuff the computer tries to interpolate your keys or your ideas and it's it will look horrible so it's a very mental kick in the face and that's where you need to make it beautiful on once so all right what else what is um how old are you and when did you start doing animation i'm 32 and i started animation i mean i started learning 3d in university which was 2007 and then i did do a lot of journalist generalist things like anything for modeling to reading to the whole thing you know that's what you learn at university and then i specialized into character animation uh did some online courses and yeah that's where i really got into character animation all right [Music] let's continue here so let's work on that spin because that's that's a question here so we have that pose and now don't be afraid because we're still kind of animating drunk here don't be afraid to kill that's uh oh man we're gonna get banned of youtube no don't be afraid to kill your key frames all right delete ah it's all gone all right it is a bit tricky i gotta admit on animating uh with one uh globe control or like with one party control um so like a spin like this will probably need to be hand animated um let's see how this is going i want to do two spins so let's animate actually animate this and this is basically stop motion so rotate um so it's going there then we're back here so that doesn't make sense i actually want to rotate like that we go associated a big fur bit further oh man like there you go there and then you let's delete it because we want it to be all adding up so we switch here and we do have some gap here so we probably do an extra in between later on jump rotate this is a bit eyeballing at the moment because i want to see how how it feels um one turn go back a bit ah there we go so what i what i try to do here is we want to kick in the rotation of the jump and then ease it out and then come down okay so as you can see i didn't animate any of the the body or like the but now it's just the rotation i just isolated the rotation animation here just to get the right speed of that going so right here and then probably on the next frame yeah that's where we go down so we rotate it even further i mean okay now we do want to end up let me turn on my sketch again right around there yeah somewhere around there okay let's um go and take the body control actually turn it on and then move it and there somewhere around there okay now what what i do have right now is i have my final key where i want to end up i'm going to adjust my location keys to make this arc happen so so we go into as you can see they're all keys and you know you're in position and it's going to be fairly like the speed of the jump is going to be fairly linear towards the right and we can play with it later but you know there's probably there's probably something here where you could you know tween it that's probably twinning it all eh yeah okay i'll do do this by hand um and for this i tend to use the actual um g i use g and i just to to stick to the actual keys so i'm not if i hit only g it will go around and that's not what i want so g g and then y for those who are wanting the the keys to be visible sorry so something like that well look at that let me actually extend the frames here okay so that's my my um sideways motion and then we go to the y keys here so it jumps up big jump continues let's make i'm just looking for roughly an arc so go up here a little bit up here go a bit more down and this one probably go down a little bit faster so we do have a fast i do feel still that it's that's actually traveling a bit too far so let's take a look here yeah it's traveling quite far a little bit too far for my taste it almost spins out of screen so let me you know take those keys you could actually blend it to neighbor if i deselect this one it will let me actually go to the last frame here and just move it down a bit see how that feels actually let me turn off the scratch just to not get distracted by that however i do i do i do i do want to end up the other way around it's all a big puzzle isn't it so on this frame right here i do want to end up pose like that so how are we going to do that i have no idea probably rotate it even further on the jump and then we end up on this frame right here we'll see i mean not happy about that no no no no let's turn it even further i'm just gonna extend the turn here so but then we end up on this back so this is some live decision making uh trying to find nice readable poses because what i do let me go a bit about the process when i'm in right now you always tend to when you do any performance you want to make sure that it's readable to the audience whenever it's fast action or dialogue you want to make sure that your character is very clear and as simplified as possible so shapes will be heavily simplified in action scenes because they go so fast and in order to follow the action you want to you know read a face read a fist or you know read the motion in general so what i'm figuring out right now is what i like okay what i like here is that we're actually having this hang time so we do a spin and we have a moment here where we actually see his face and then we go down but i and then here again i do want to see his face and we don't but then again let's see let's see what happens if i just and it's a puzzle man it's a puzzle i just want to animate his body first i don't care too much about rotation so settle him down this could be a stretcher actually and then we do turn it but not as far push it in then right here we do slide him over like that reducing profile so it's like it goes backwards and then we see his face go up and then right here we do turn around let me keep here so we end up over here of him kind of skating it's getting away going up there will be some cheating going on there guys and that's where you know smear frames and anything that's especially this fast action uh so we have it right here when we kind of go through this action right here and then go up same happening here i actually want his body to go even a bit more like that go forward this this might not make sense guys but let me explain in a second what what i'm after go up here and then there so it's coming down there's a little turn there we'll work on his face there just to make it a bit more readable okay let's do the let's finish the the the feed here and then i'll check the the chat and we'll i'll explain a little bit about my thought process on how how do they how do i come up with motion and where to put things so we come down here he does a twirl then yeah it might not even rotate that far and just displacing his feet just so we see what like that something like that just just see what what happens so down okay then he does that turn how does this look guys how do you make something out of this it's gotta be good let me go back a little bit here switching from ik to fk hey i would say oh man this body look at that let me actually turn that back a little bit his body is a bit broken um so right here okay so we come down and he comes down in a very awkward angle i gotta say because now it's almost like he's off balance so let's see how to fix that um is an animation the most straightforward thing ever it is so we slide no it's not i do want to end up there as like i don't even care about the food contact at this point i'm just looking at some strong poses that kind of catches the the body here and see if we can yeah and kind of like work my way this this body actually yeah that turn is is like that it does turn around and this foot will scoot over this foot will actually push behind there and there it catches up looks a bit it still looks a bit broken but i i do feel like we got something here so let me you know this one move over so it goes into this swoop and then gets out of frame but it does go out of frame backwards which is a i mean let's just go let's not make things too i mean i could you know turn him around but because we're so close you know close to the edge of the frame i just want to get him landed and this is kind of like our exiting frame you know when i think make things too complicated here so let's lift him up a little bit and he's rotated quite a bit this way and i still have those arms you know into this twisted form but hey okay so that's it and then you know we go there oh and we want to go actually move that backwards and then this is going to be the easy part just move it out of screen roughly we'll play with the timing a bit and then here get it all the way out of there you know it does still feel awkward we'll figure that out but at least we have our fundamental motion in there and i do see like this moment right here there's a big gap that i would love to spend some time on um but let's uh let's go back to the chat real quick and then i'll explain a bit about my thought process because it might be a little bit mysterious isn't it okay man animating life something else eh let's see [Music] a lot of discussion with the matter what's cloud rig though that is the the rigging system and rigging ui that i'm using right here so maybe it's been discussed already but it's basically the the rig setup that's been used for sprite fight where all of our settings are um yeah like layers uh switches fk ik switches and whatnot so that's called cloudrigg it comes with the blender rigs so you could try them out yourself and it's also free so you can download the plugin or the add-on sorry okay can you make sweet sprite right i'm not sure maybe anything else why not use a really human model to shampoo the movement yeah but what's the fun of that we're not mimicking real life we're creating life all right it's much more fun to it's you know the thing is when you rely too much on an office obviously i'm you know finding and exploring motion here um which is a bit more tricky but i'm i try to deliberately stay of any real footage reference because uh i want this thing to look very organic and cartoony um so let me show you a little bit of what i mean with that just a bit what time is it okay one and a half hour away i mean we're on our way one and a half hour so yep there we go so what i'm looking for and let me actually open up the annotation i'm looking for [Music] general shapes that kind of flow into one another to mimic or like to accentuate the motion so let me actually turn off bones here so when we come in i mean we go into this this kind of squash what's happening right here and we can push this way beyond of course now we go into a stretch we settle into something a little bit more like that go back into the stretch and again this is blocking so we'll push this around push then go down and then really you know go back into the stretch even more stretch and again i would love pushing this into the uh sorry even more stretch even more squash pushing it up to this nice little quirk like what do you call it twist and then right here you do you also go into uh squash again so it's finding the contrast of motion and if i turn off the character maybe this look weird it does but you see like i'm looking for the overall shape to to um to deform in a very dynamic flow instead of perfectly being bound to to body mechanics because i mean yeah it's uh it's a different purpose i would say and i i know people are very you know strict or like uh bound what do you call it they swear by video reference or anything but for this it's uh it's less technical and more fun to do it this way as well and you know you struggle a bit but you find solutions here and there and hopefully yeah push through that face let me actually kill that and then i mean this is fun too look at that invisible invisible snowman invisible wrecks i mean okay now let's continue so we still air oh i still have d there we go push back a little bit like that all right i just want to finish that end part just ending on something a bit more believable i mean down here and here instead of you see like it's leaning backwards a bit so i'm just you know pushing it this way so the the center of gravity is actually catching up on character this pose you might be a little bit off balance still like that just to kind of follow the trajectory of the motion and make that more fluent so we go down and then this might be way too extreme here so actually let me this is i like the it's just a bit of a let me move this over and then and then push that back a little bit let's see oh that's working but basically push it back a little bit and then it's stuck there so that's weird okay let's not do that hey i was thinking of make that transition a bit more fluent and actually have this pose in there we can eventually push it towards this pose a bit more but this this frame from here to here is a bit violent it snaps more from one pose to the other so let's let me actually so here we already kind of turn a little bit there it's hilary okay i think there we go and this is just for this pose let's create a bit more up and down it's coming down and as you can see like the the legs here are pretty straight and then suddenly we that's something we work on later on those transitions push so going down here i you know why not push it why not push it and even further down just and then here push it down a bit more rotate a bit forward i'm doing sound effects as well by the way and then coming up again and we can actually come up a bit higher yeah all right next stop let's actually push the poses a bit more and make them a bit more readable also the faces or like the the head isn't animated but at least we get the the main motion going on here and again you try to work from very rough to very defined um so you know you don't want to spend too much time working on the fingers or you know you want to [Music] feel the energy uh that like feel that the energy of the animation is right before you dive into any nitpicky stuff and uh yeah this this feels uh pretty pretty cool if you have cement some frames here missing so let me shorten that so now we know now for the beginning part pushes off rotates around i think i do want to rotate around a little bit let me try to actually animate and not talk just to see what comes out of that all right let's give me one sec uh before that let me turn back make him do a backflip sure give me one week um okay i'll just animate guys okay so for this arm i wanted ah i start talking again i guess i just talked to myself then um right here i want to lead with the body so push on the body a bit more go a little bit more straight here we do hit a little bit of a wall here going up ah we'll work that out later let's work on the on the arms so again this pose is really i'm trying to make the shape the the the basically the stretch as um straight as possible you know just make that a very um straight line compared to the squash we're actually making more yes this is squash yes i'm just mixing up terminology here so make him a bit more right here i do want to get some rotation in there same with this arm oh that's on a wrong frame let me push that back actually i did want to it's too early i think and when we come down we bring up those arms a little bit to kind of catch up the um the apex are like the follow through follow through of the those arms so having this one fully straight is a bit weird so now this one feels a bit weird too but so let me push this down even further and we do need that extra frame here so i'm going to start also to block things out on twos going up here i do want to stretch the body bit so already pushing stuff there wow when we jump i do want to just foot a bit more below there so it comes in hmm i'm not i'm not actually not that happy with those arms going too straight so it's like oop it's just because it's it's rotating it makes it a bit robotic so make those arms a bit and this switch of the hand it's a bit weird too so probably on this frame and also i'll make that adjustment so you see where the hand is going a bit better now we're landing here and then get that arm out there oh wrong frame and then swish it back the other way around yeah there we definitely need those extra frames this feels a bit fast too somehow maybe it's because we need that extra frame let me put it in here basically adding that extra frame on frame zero ah it doesn't it's just the playback when i put when i it doesn't play the first couple of frames properly when i loop it it does look a bit better okay so on this frame i'll just push it back up oh nothing this is local rotation or how do you call it local i go to global pushing everything same direction and speed let's push it back a little bit and then there's that big speed pump try to space it out a bit even more even so now all right and this from here on it's just you know looking for cool ways of flowing the motion um flowing the motion wow i hear myself talk great um yeah it's this switch right here so it lands we need that in between so first off let's see what d plenty neighbor will make of it so i'll just take all of our controls our main controls hit shift e look at that nothing we don't have to do anything the computer is doing all of our work so right here actually that's not i use this key right here like that just to get the idea so and then you view over a bit more oh wrong frame just looking at the motion here adding that in between really makes it a bit more flat so and also yeah the ice is a bit sticky so what happens if we just push it down so the arms go up there's the antic and i wonder if we can even push that arm up again a little bit more right here this is a terrible pose as you see but i'm just looking for the flow work out we'll work out that pose later so let's see let me push this one and then right here we actually need to move because it's ice move forward and then it's moving backward but that's fine because it's kind of like pushing off and then here going to that oh we do we do still have that problem where i was pointing out earlier when the the the the eyes like the foot is let's see pushing and then the next frame it's kind of like stuck there so let's push it back a bit more and then right here i let's see if i actually rotate it like this a little bit towards camera ah that's terrible actually yeah we're coming from this pose so let's pull it even more back i don't mind any destruction like this i'm not looking at the character at all i'm looking at motion okay i look for emotion instead of breaking things i every bone that's available for me to break the rig if it gives me the right motion i don't mind anyway yeah um i feel like this ah it's ah it's shifted of course i'm like why is it not moving but it's fk and we switch to fk here now going down here um at the end a little bit more up even uh we don't push it like that and here i want this hand to be kind of leading the motion upwards so it's already so what i'm looking for here is the motion so from here let me get the annotation tool i want the hand to kind of make this trajectory so on the next frame all right it's going down a bit but it's like it's make the arc up and then goes into the next move just to make that motion read and feel nicely nice how do we even get rid of these drawings eh i have no clue i'm just tool annotate view i'll just i'm mute i like hide hide and t all right let's go back to and it's already rotated quite far and that's hard to read here too and ah is broken here i don't mind so we push it and it's already rotated quite far so let's push that back a bit and actually just playing around a bit with same here we already also go into that basically this arm even though it's the other arm we do want to kind of connect it to that other arm because the daughter arm is this one so right there even though it's rotating it like gives us and this this i i avoid so now it's sticking into frame you really see that there probably we need another frame here also the um all right how's everyone doing this is still the blocking stage um that's a good question we do this i would call this blocking plus so it's a little bit different because it's not production it's not a production shot if you are in a production shot i would show a pass like an hour ago maybe that pass wasn't that good uh to the director but basically to actually uh yeah the first pass i would actually show is the sketch the thumbnail one if that's get that gets an approval i could block it out but the thing is with blocking and splining and all the phases it's planning a bit uh and i would say i'm blocking plus right now i'm getting all the detailed more detailed ideas in there and from there on i'll jump to i'm i'm blocking on twos at the moment so hey million good to see you all right okay let's continue right here so we we come down to this very squashed pose and we push out of that and just something i you know try to to trail that a bit with this arm so i just push it like that and then right here what happens if i just continue that as well with this arm it's a bit high though so let's push it down a bit like that yeah the rotation part i still need to work on especially that first bit i feel like it's not feeling right and then once we continue that rotation and we come to an end here i want those arms to actually lift more why it's like a ah why i mean i'm talking to myself here man i'm getting insane uh pushing it up and then this is a pose that i will probably blend between while i'm coming out of this rotation so maybe this one actually we'll see and then this is a kind of our apex point so the hands are overlapping a little bit here oh that's and pushing down up so it's like shoulder does feel a bit busted gotta say let's see i'm just blending a little bit here pushing it backwards so yeah it it it's almost like a i don't know ah i don't know i don't have any analogy to kind of explain why i kind of open up it's like you go from this very straight small shape and you want to open up on the on the on the apex and i don't know you try what feels right and then so you open up here if you were thinking of something i like thinking of learning something here maybe you have more questions once you leave but hey that's uh not a bad thing i guess or maybe it does i'm in um what if we actually already rotate this arm come down now i actually want to get away with this arm here and instead of making him kind of in this very awkward position let's move him up a bit and move him up here to a little bit oh yeah nice come down and same here like because it's armed out this is a bit weird eh you do want to follow the motion somehow with with the the whole body so it's coming down here um rotating a little bit back turning around not i mean that i gotta say guys animating and live television that's something else eh so but we're getting there hey we're getting there i'm having fun i hope you guys have too so right here we might be a bit too low so push that back a bit and get those hands so we end up right coming from up here and coming down that's a bit stuck there going into this and same here like as we land we get into an arc that i like i like arcs okay um so we go into this arc and it doesn't wait oh i hit it of course great i'm like what let me actually create a new one and then delete this one get into this arc and we kind of want to follow that arc with the body so this is not the shape right here so push it back right here same thing like the body that we still follow this arc and we rotate within that arc so even here i would love to add in some rotation and then we flip it's just to make one shape towards the other feel organic and that's all folks that's animation for you shapes moving into other shapes so like this and then we come here and then it comes up again um i do i do want to lift his body here and we haven't animated his his head at all yet turn off the annotations here is there a shortcut for turning on and off annotations probably i just do now i'm just a simple animator here i only know how to put in keys now this switch feels a bit weird still so it goes down probably wants uh let's see if we can just move this arm up here and then yeah there you go now we catch up like that now move the shoulder up and because we're facing away from the camera i don't mind pushing up the shoulder even though it's broken but hey we only care about motion here i mean that's what i do and we'll fix it later actually i do want to rotate him a little bit more towards camera right at the end i mean okay now okay what's up with the questions man i hope someday i could make a character that complicated yeah man it's not that complicated just i mean what do i know about making a character you can do it man come on let's put in the hours put in the hours can you show you how you animated the boombox guy getting drowned in p that was actually not me animating it um it's done by daniella one of the animators on sprite right so reverse playback yeah changes your rotational velocity like when then just close their arms to spin i guess yeah that might be it he's on auto key yeah man i'm a lazy animator i don't think about my keys i just hit key every time i know oh well i don't hit key i just move my character anyway we're over two hours if you guys still like it i'll just continue until well let's do one half an hour for now and maybe do a second part later on uh of course this isn't finished at all um but at least we're quite quite a long way through getting some basic ideas in there i would love to push the animation uh more and even you know work on those shapes a bit more extreme so let's continue for half an hour more and then call it call of duty day so so for the head the head i probably want to let's see ah we can counter animate this that's fine so what i'm going to do now is basically post the head a little bit towards the po so like you know pose the head and see look at that push it down a bit but also towards camera then right here we do rotate but i do want to rotate like delay his head a little bit so it's kind of like it's hitting this pose and then pretty much staying in that poison profile and then we just want to delay the head a little bit push it a bit more out and then this is where we go down so right here we already kind of i was about to say we already anticipate on the on the uh the spin there but and this is one of those poses so i think i still yeah if we're going to spline it we need that that extra frame maybe i block it in already because it's a bit snappy and i mean there's nothing wrong with snappiness so what i do here instead of this pose i try to make his face visible maybe even counter like rotate it like that that's weird but maybe not let's see because we do yeah it's tricky the counter animation i'm not maybe i convert this to um to world space rotation um but let's see how this is turning out so here we do the switch pushing the head up a little bit just for readability so by default it's right there i just want to push it up a bit and then right here right here we go down here and then i do want to rotate it up already like that a little bit facing more towards camera same here it's yeah there's this part here i'm i need more frames to make that nice and fluid i mean of course it's still blocking and it's on twos and then this has been a little bit of a headbang like boom boom and then going up so instead of going that far down maybe rotate it a little bit more up like that and then back a little bit yeah yeah is this part right here it feels a bit too you could you know it's not the worst but it's this part let's do something wild here uh maybe not i was like ah let's get a quick let's get a quick smear frame in there but that's not going to happen um smear frames we probably need to let's see what happens if we actually push this motion up a little bit and make that rotation basically add that in in between on one frame so it's like let's see so right here i do want to switch it i don't want to look at the back side of his head so on this frame we swap it around like this not fully but at least so it's like and then right here i do wanna already see some of his facial features all right some chats who did the rig that is done by demeter zadik he's a our rigger here at blender um kind of humans did you use reference to draw the stick man if you did show it i did not i did do a lot of dancing animation so i didn't know what kind of moves i wanted to do so i drew from my experience in memory i guess my ex is a figure skater crying emoji that's sad sorry it's sad um animate the redhead yes that's that's something where you will get to probably next chapter what is the next animation project gonna be that will be announced as soon as possible so i'm just going to tweak it uh until the end of times we'll do another quick q a thing so get your questions in and see how far we can get with this just getting a little linear so there like that's pushing it up i'm just going to tweak things around here now you see this arm it's it's there's no curve in there but what i want to do as well when we push it around here make it nice and bendy so it will follow as well very cool let's work a bit on this part right here it does feel like it's sticking a bit here as you see the well of course it's it's not really sliding it doesn't need to be you know full speed but at least we need some motion first off maybe let him land a little more to the side and here too got a bit more space just finding you know this one is on two so let me yeah this is gimbal man diameter double body like double torso root control please for this kind of motion that's very is going to be very helpful or if there's any other you know if i do shift e it goes gimbal but i then hit g it will only in between your location so that's a nice thing to kind of in between only one one manipulator at a time so it's actually um so if you do the breakdown or the blender neighbor so shift e and then uh hit g or s after so let's say i hit shift e it's doing everything now i hit r or like g it's only doing the the location then i hit x or y or z and it will only blend that specific channel so in that way you can really you know be nitpicky with your inbetweening so it does these in-betweens are terrible it it feels like it's speeding up actually but hey we can work with that and we can take a look at the curves and you can clearly see it here so it's hitting an apex going faster hitting another apex so sorry if that doesn't make sense you here i do want to already see some rotation going on so because we're looking a little bit sideways rotate his body a little bit more like that so you do see a bit more rotation same here we keep the same shape but we do want to see a little bit more and then we don't have a key so let's i mean i do break the regula a little bit here and then here we go to that 180 again so this frame right here push it back a bit and one two does this even make sense i don't know let me actually this is something dancers like ballerinas can do but why not if you can't break the rig and it feels good so ah it doesn't feel good i i'm just thinking of ah he's gonna turn around okay never mind yeah i mean slightly adjusting still okay um now let's add some bendiness to those arms so there are moments here why i like it when it's actually having a little bit of a straight arc straight arc wow straight corner straights straight lines whatever um so let me actually turn on the stretch controls and what it does it gives you control over the actual venus so for the band controls let me actually turn off everything else and then and this is some people are going to hate me in the studio but i'm keying everything sorry healthy i just want to not lose anything right here so [Music] and suddenly he is he's complaining why is he seeing so slow he's skiing unnecessary bones oh well for now let's so for instance a pose like this i'm not really happy with that i'm just going to key some of the poses where i feel like some bends would be cool so right here i try to you know push you and it's all like complementing the general motion so right here as you can see it goes all the way here and here we're going to do what actually push it up there you're going crazy that's not even possible even here i want that stretch to be what is he even doing it's a smear so just for the fast action it's kind of goes through that action and you see the arm is still broken here so that's where we do not want the smear so we kind of reset and when do you reset those bones when you don't see it so so we go here uh actually here when we're right behind lg alt r l s all g's mean i reset the bones so now it's back to normal i do find this pose i ah okay we'll get back to that later same here just adding a little bit of bends here like that and same goes for these guys and actually the hand is dragging a bit behind so let's go back to actually fk and so when when when this body is coming up here let that hand drag a little bit so it's that snaps back so maybe a little bit too much of that maybe just let it down so it's going up and then instead of going uh like this it it we basically ah turn it inwards maybe a little bit like that okay now same thing uh i was one thing i wanted to change it's these arms here they're a little bit right here and you know you gotta train your eyes a little bit for it to see okay what what else do i need to do and uh it's a bit of a habit thing but you try to spot the the motion and the flow of things and one of them is this this arm right here so it's coming down it's coming from this point and it's coming from this angle from up straight and then maybe even you know i i'm breaking the arm here by the way but hey there just pushing it down a bit pushing the shoulder down i do want to set a key here and then right here even more we want more bend we basically want a screwdriver so that's not a screwdriver and yeah wait a second this so you see you can you follow this arm on the trajectory then you kind of move this arm away then this arm will kind of and again you know i'm not i haven't fully posted out yet so even those fingers are not and we got five more minutes uh i don't i don't mind this hand but it's popping a bit now maybe that's not that poppy it's uh it goes into this big motion and then i do yes this this frames right here still feels a bit no stretch ik man i wonder if this even makes sense to you guys all my rambling and so these arms right here i want i still like from this moment i wanted to feel a lot more like a screw driver is that like like how do you even call it um twist yeah just a twist so from here this arm still stays behind this arm goes in front here we're breaking the rig once again and then then it flips back hey oh wait yeah this is one of those you see the arms are okay let's move this back a little bit and then i'm screwing up the rig here am i not the amateur is crying right now the rigger how do you even animate my precious rig hmm this frame i like push this arms a bit further and then they go up um i do get an error from youtube right now they're like you're too boring no kidding um youtube is not receiving enough video to maintain smooth streaming um well let's call it a day guys um let's see what we got here let's play and actually join so this is what we end up in i mean two and a half hours let's say that's actually ah i'm pretty happy with that we we came a long way didn't we let's do some questions any questions okay let's see what the hell is this this my friend is rex performing a screwdriver on ice rex shoot it have at least five frames for the spin yeah we'll do do some in-betweening later on um [Music] what about overlapping that overlapping action well small things like the uh the center the you know the center hat and these hairs that's something i do later on just as a final pass but i do want to already do some hand blocking that already kind of in instigate um overlapping action so i do plan about it um [Music] how long does a field at disney or pixar take before it is published depends on how many animators you have if you have an army of animators i think the average is around 60 animators per show and they work on a film like around six months to a year i guess that's without pre-production [Music] great why blender hard to learn isn't life life is hard to learn all right thanks guys um [Music] i'll call it a day thank you so much i hope you liked it and if you guys would like to see more of this or even a finished stream like finishing this animation and adding some some extra uh yeah extra extra details and polishing to it uh splining it that uh let me let us know i'm happy to join any stream any stream what see ya bye please show us more how you make models we'll do that later gpu description how to become an animator start pushing keys around and you will learn see you guys thank you

Channel: Blender Studio

Views: 45,408

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Id: C7l3ojbeRZY

Length: 167min 10sec (10030 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 08 2021