[Figure 9] Frames 31 and 60.

Figure 9 shows two upper body poses for the turn. Notice the lead and follow built into each pose. For example, frame 31 shows the hips already beginning their turn while the shoulders drag behind. You can see that same idea applied at frame 60. The arms are swinging around as the chest is slowing to a rest.

Try to keep track of the arcs associated with each pose. Making the arms flow correctly between each frame is important. I must continually switch between the top, side, front and perspective views to ensure that the wrists stay on track.

The turn is nearing a level of quality that I can live with. It’s time to complete the blocking portion of this shot and move on to sf02 and sf03. The remaining 47 frames of this shot are a bit less complicated. I have the stretching motion to screen left and then a stretching motion to the right. I’m going to spend a little time creating poses for both actions. Similar to the first few frames, there is a long pause at both of these positions. It’s basically another moving hold. Based on the timings from the quick pass, I ll add keys to controllers at frames 80, 90, 101, 115 and 121. Figure 10 shows the two major poses.

[Figure 10] The stretching frames.

I’ve tried to push the exaggeration on both sides of the stretch. However, I usually find myself not going far enough. I’ll probably end up working a bit more on the pose when I move into the refinement stage. Also, as these keys are being created on the low-res character, I’m not necessarily seeing the exact representation as it will appear in the high-res rig. I’ve also paid attention to the silhouettes created with these two frames, and I’ve even taken some of the cube geometry into consideration. I don’t want the character’s hands or head conflicting with anything from the background. Now on to the close-up shot.

This particular shot didn’t receive much attention during the blocking pass. However, setting a few keys will be necessary here. You might wonder why the character is going through a yawn motion without closing his eyes. This shot will eventually require facial animation (I’ll talk about the specifics in Chapter 18). For now, however, I’m going to concentrate on getting the head and chest working. I’ll begin with the last frame from sf01. Remember, I’m cutting on action and need the shot to sync up.

The initial motion of the head is screen right to screen left. The character is starting a big yawn at the beginning of the scene. His head begins at frame 1 and travels to its extreme left position by frame 32. These two keys would certainly create a head turning from left to right, but you know from the chapter on arcs that organic objects don’t travel in a straight line. I’m going to add a key at frame 17 to create a more natural shift in the head. This additional key will also allow me to create a more believable ease out from the head’s starting frame. I’ll rotate the head so it favors the initial position instead of the halfway point the computer created.