For this particular shot we found some great animation reference in "A Bugs Life." One scene in particular is of the grasshoppers cheering for the circus. Although it is not a basketball game it gives us some idea of how other animators approached creating an excited character. After looking through the animated scenes, we viewed some footage of NBA basketball games. Although we expected to look primarily at the crowd, we found the most interesting reference in the actions of the players standing near the bench. The dramatic nature of these games and the impact on the players lives made these reactions very natural. It was obvious the players were genuinely excited about an event that took place so this was a good resource for our scene.

This first process of observation was extremely beneficial. However, to take it a step further we decided to shoot some reference of ourselves performing the scene. This would allow us to roll the different actions that we studied into one concise performance that we could control. In staging the shot the way we want we can choose the location of the camera and we can cater our performance specifically to our scene.

We used a simple 8mm video camera and set it up against a blank wall. Remember the quality of the image is irrelevant, so you don't have to go out and spend thousands of dollars. A cheap camera will work and many large electronics stores have great ones for under 400 dollars. We set the camera to record and began to practice the action. It's best to work through the shot many times and be as loose as possible. It's understandable that it can be intimidating to act and for the first few attempts your actions will probably be unnatural. Just relax, by doing the action many times you will develop a comfort level with the camera and provide you with multiple takes to study from.

Movie 1 shows some of the performances that we liked best. These two clips put together have some nice subtleties that we will try to implement into the scene. Mike has a couple of jumps then some nice pumps with his arms. We will study the reference for timings and poses and use it to get a better sense of how the body is behaving. In this case we made some quick thumbnails that illustrate some the key poses and their corresponding frame numbers. This is a big step in being able to translate the reference we shot to the video. One important thing to remember about looking at reference, is that it is just reference. We're not in the business of copying or rotoscoping so we just use this footage as a basis for information about a specific action. Timing generally doesn't translate directly from live action to animation and poses and actions usually have to be exaggerated.

Movie 2 shows the resulting animation. When animating this shot, we basically turned up the volume on most all of the actions. The jumps are significantly higher, the poses more exaggerated, and the timing is considerably faster. We had to take these liberties in order to create an action that was "over the top." Copying the poses and the timings directly from the reference would have resulted in a mediocre piece of animation.... and the last time we checked no one likes mediocre animation.