This was part of the storyboard for the second scene of Hayley and I's animation. We had agreed to have him walk towards the stall to establish him into the scene and then have a shot from behind to construct the main theme of rivalry into out narrative. However because Hayley's character's legs weren't rigged, I found this to be an extremely challenging part of the production process. After establishing him in the scene, I knew it would be substantial to place the camera from hips up, but it was a struggle to find a realistic, yet interesting way to introduce him to our audience, as I didn't want him to just glide into the scene. Therefore I decided to try a few things.
To begin with, I began animating exactly where I left off, so I didn't need to create a new scene or change camera angles, as I had already had a camera positioned previously. So I began to animate the first idea that I had, which was to just have the big brother 'walk' into the scene (shot from hips up), and then tap the little sister on the shoulder, illustrated in the video above. My first complication with this scene was that when I was playing back my keyframes, the scene was moving extremely slowly, so it was hard for me to see the movements in natural rhythm. I made a lot of play blasts though to counter this. Once I animated his entrance, I then animated a little interaction where the little sister slaps his hand away, however because I had just animated this from my head and not from reference, I didn't really like the outcome, and it looked too forced.
I asked Hayley what she thought and her main concern was that the big brother just 'appears' from nowhere, and that he should have been in the first scene to begin with. But because his legs don't move I didn't think it was necessary to have him there. To compromise, I decided to just think of something else, as we both couldn't agree on how to solve this part of the scene.
This next idea that I had then, was to have the big brother appear from behind the stall. This meant that him not being in the first scene was solved as you wouldn't be able to see him anyway, as well as his legs didn't need to be moved, as I was only planning on moving his upper body. As well as being more playful, this scene was much more enjoyable to animate as I could really focus on secondary movements such as his hands and his shoulders for when his body bends sideways. These are little details that I liked to pay attention to, and I found it much easier to animate in the 'hidden' mode in Maya, by selecting the objects I only want to see and pressing 'Alt+H'. This was also the first time I had to animate two characters, in other words animating how one character responds to the other, which again was a challenge as I had to remember the timings of the other character. I showed this scene to Hayley and she liked this MUCH more, and so did I, so I was glad that I had given it another try. From this I have learnt that the first idea is not always the best, and it's alright if things don't work out in the beginning.
I then wanted to see if I could bring Hayley's character around to the front of the stall, as Sara advised me that it was alright to just moved him across the scene even if his legs don't move. Therefore I tried this and really didn't like how he was appearing as he just looked like a chess piece moving across a board. So I tried to move his skeleton and key frame it but when I did, although I had the timing of the key frames correct, whenever I played them back they sped up like in the video. This was extremely frustrating, so I decided to leave him out of this scene and see how it looked.
And I think the scene looks fine without him, but it will be something I bring up in the Crit as Hayley and I are looking at the scene 24/7 so we might not see it how others see it and it is important to me that we get an unbiased account.
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