Dino and Cat (December-February 2013)

Who's hunting who?

Lessons Learned

1. Test rigs 

            I always test new rigs to see their limitations and this shot helped reinforce the need for such practices. I was certainly used to having rig features that aren’t stock in all rigs, which can be frustrating, but it’s an interesting challenge to work with those limitations.

Things that went right

1. Don’t be afraid to cut out and redo sections

            This appears to be becoming a part of my workflow, but I’m always happy when it goes right. In this shot I changed a section even when I was as far as blocking+ and it didn’t disrupt the shot. The main thing I like to focus on all the way up to polish is keep the keys clean an editable which makes retiming or sometimes redoing sections much more manageable.

2. Layered animation

            I never really considered myself a layered animator, but with complex characters such as quadrupeds I find it helped to break down the movement piece by piece. I would start with the largest control I could then slowly focus on smaller and smaller controls, this made it easier to visualize how each part of the body affects each other.

3. Tails

            I’ve always had trouble with overlap and something as complex as not one, but two tails in this shot was a little intimidating. Studying reference as well as using a layered approach made it manageable.