This week, we moved forward with our shots by transitioning from blocking to spline. Going from blocking to splining can be a humbling experience—once you change the curves from stepped, everything tends to look wrong! After spending a lot of time fixing the animation in spline and incorporating George’s feedback from last week, I had another critique session with him.
George pointed out several areas that needed improvement:
- Skateboard Turn Speed: The turn of the skateboard was way too fast. To fix this, I need to rotate it slower to make the movement more realistic.
- Jump Landing: One of the big problems was that the landing of the jump still looked too slow. Despite changing many things, I couldn’t get it right. George helped me understand how to fix this by adjusting some of the poses before the character hits the ground. These changes should help create a more dynamic and believable landing.
- Starting Pose: At the beginning of the shot, my character appeared squashed on the skateboard. George suggested changing this to a more relaxed pose to set a better tone for the animation.
Here are my key tasks for the next steps:
- Adjust Skateboard Turn Speed: Slow down the rotation of the skateboard to create a more natural turn.
- Refine Jump Landing: Implement the pose adjustments before the character hits the ground to make the landing quicker and more dynamic.
- Improve Starting Pose: Change the initial squashed pose to a more relaxed one to improve the overall flow of the animation.
Despite the challenges of moving to spline, I’m excited to see the improvements in my animation as I continue refining it.