Class Content
Blocking:
Blocking is like the bones of the body, aka: the blocking is the foundation that everything else is laid on top of. The poses shouldn’t be the same as those from reference, be mindful of line of action and the other fundamentals to push the poses and make them and the movement more visually appealing.
Some tips for blocking:
- Time can be saved while blocking be copying similar poses and making adjustments on top
- Don’t forget hands and fingers in blocking. While the detailed finger movement can be left until polish, they should still be moving and posed nicely at this stage. Don’t just have open basic poses for the hands in every pose.
- Establish your key poses that tell the story
- Don’t worry TOO much about timing right now, get the poses down first. You can do retiming later if needed
- Don’t forget to use FK/IK where needed
- Finished, not perfect! Getting the base of the shot down at this stage is most important
- Don’t key parts of body on different frames, everything should be keyed to same frame for blocking
George also showed us a cool video explaining how important the ‘finished, not perfect’ approach is when making progress in learning. I definitely struggle with this myself, and find it difficult to finish tasks due to focusing too much on the smaller details. It was good to hear and understand the idea that in a year what I consider perfect now won’t look great to me because I will have improved, so why should I waste time trying to be perfect now when I can spend more time on learning.
Blocking Plus:
Essentially a way of adding in more keys to get that feeling of polish within your blocking
Moving holds: when pose is holding, adding some movement in (breathing, dragging, settling into pose, etc).
Copied pairs: a technique where a keyframe (or pose) is duplicated and repeated for a specific duration, creating a hold or a static pose within an animation sequence.
Breakdowns and Arcs Breakdown: a pose somewhere between two key poses that better shows the movement
This week’s assignment:
- Apply blocking plus stuff to current shot blocking to take it to the next level
Should be in stepped still. Poses are important at this stage so make sure they are really strong.
Week 1 Assignment: Body Mech + Planning
Filmed reference:
I both filmed myself and one of my housemates for my reference. I was struggling a bit to do a natural fall/stumble myself, so I asked one housemate to push the other into view, and gave the one on camera directions on how to act out the rest of the shot.
Thumbnails:
Individual poses:
Week 1.5 Assignment:
As mentioned before we’re a little behind due to losing a day last week to the bank holiday, so this week I did the blocking on Thursday evening for review on Friday alongside my plan.
I didn’t add as many poses as I would have liked due to the time constraints, but I am happy with the poses overall. I do need to hide the skin under the clothing at some point as it clips through the clothes several times and is distracting.
Plan + Blocking Feedback:
- The fall and skid along the floor is too simple, I should be pushing myself more. Either have the character fully stumble or completely face plant the floor
- Could still do the turn and punch towards the hidden person who pushes them, but George recommends instead just having the character realise where they are after the fall, pause, and then go into the dance/wave
- Poses in current blocking are nice, but overall idea needs pushing before I move more into animation progress