This week was the beggining of the animation as the master file was completed and each member of the group could start to block the main poses. For me it is best to begin with the lip sync animation, I am aware that I can use animation layers for that but when previewing the animation it is always more interesting to have the character at least following the sound clip.
For this next stage I also went looking for ways to constrain animation for a period of time as my character will throw a hat to the audience and grab a microphone when he enters so I found out that when parent constraining an object, when both are keyed it is possible to animate “blend parent” attribute that keys the constraint. But on another project where a character has to grab a bottle and change the constrained hand I asked Luke if there was a better way to do it as I was only able to parent the object to one of the hands and there is a tool!! AnimSnap which does exactly the same but you don’t have to parent the object.
So I began my animation with the lip sync and a short walk to the middle of the stage so that Michael Jackson can prepare his pose before it all starts. While Mickael Jackson is walking to his position, a guitar player is making his solo and the first camera shot is from the audience, right after that it cuts to a camera behind the character which then makes a tilt shot from the feet to the head and we can see the view from the artist.
We already decided on the concert logo and will insert it in each act with different effects each time.
Lip Sync animation: