Lifting the Groceries - Part 2: Pose Test

After I got a good idea of what I wanted to do with this assignment, set forth in drawing the key poses. I quickly found out that a bipedal character is a ton easier to draw than a snowman, despite my first impressions. Mainly, I can keep most of the volumes consistent from one frame to another. Plus, I can tell where he is supposed to bend, which makes his poses easier to achieve. If I can't really do it, then he can't either (without serious injury).

After I got the key poses done, I did a few extremes. Extremes are basically the passing point between one pose to another. Without them, when doing a pose test, things tend to get a bit choppy and you are thrown off as to what the action is doing. Most supervising animators will do the keys and as many extremes as they feel they have time to do, then hand them off to an assistant. The assistant then will do all of the in-between drawings. That is why it is important to have as much information as possible so they have a good idea of what the movement should be.

Since the bags were going to be fairly static for the most part, I kept them on a separate layer and composited them all in After Effects. Essentially, there are only three drawings of the bags that will really have to be made. The rest will be animated with the character.

After everything was done, I shot them with the digital camera, composited them, and adjusted the timing so that it felt close to what the final should be:

I can already see some things that I will be changing for the final product, but for now, this should give a sense. I think I am looking at 90 or so drawings for this. We shall see how it goes. After this, I think we just might jump into Maya, which is what I am looking forward to.