Class 1 / Week 7: More Overlapping Action / Tailor

Before I forget, let me  start of with saying that this week will test your patience! Week 7 was a continuation of the principles of  Overlapping Action and Follow Through. But for this week's assignment we had to apply what we've learned from animating the Pendulum and apply the same concepts and principles to a character with a character rig named "Tailor". The challenging part of this assignment is not just adding overlap, but because tails work as an extremity of a living creature, in this case, a squirrel-like character. The movement is also affected by the animal's ability to control the tail. We must be really careful and study a tail's movement to make sure not only follows all the principles of overlapping action, but it must also feel "alive" and with character. We also had to apply all the principles learned in the previous sessions like the timing and spacing of a bouncing ball, anticipation and squash and stretch. This was probably the hardest assignment for me in the entire Class 1. I understood the concept pretty well in theory. I could animate the scene in 2D and illustrate the tail movements as well, but I couldn't get it to work in 3D. For some reason, I was having a lot of trouble visualizing the previous key frames and following the shape of the tail as it moved to the next frame. Also because of the rig's tail deformations, I was getting pretty bad deformations as the tail dragged and followed the arcs in those areas. Later on, I decided to start using a screen marker to draw on my screen on top of my frames and it finally started to come together. I think I went through 20 or so versions and revisions after receiving feedback from my classmates and mentor before I had something I was "kinda" happy with. YAY! :)