After making the walkcycle I did the rest of the blocking from the idea described in the previous fmp post, one of the tricky parts was the ball hitting the raptor and having an overlap in his neck, the rig was breaking due to my insisting on the neck in a certain position that would then be wrong in another perspective.
A lot of time was spent in understanding the movements and body mechanics of this creature, I did try to record myself, but then, All movement was too human. I went searching for better reference, like jurassic park – these were the best I found. Understanding the way they move is essencial for a good and clear animation.
Looking for reference when you have a fictional creature is harder as we have to look for a number of animals and creatures who do some of the movement we think it makes sense on that specific character. Maybe these dont make sense either, but looking at how someone else got to a certain animation is also a reference. After reviewing some clips of raptors way too many times it was time to try and do my own.
One of the things I did differently from my previous projects is to focus on the main poses and not so much on the continuity of movements, of course those are also important but can sometimes get in our way, regarding creativity and the ability to make an animation have a more espontaneous look.
The throw of the ball, is a very human movement but the action itself is indeed humanoid, so why not? I got a reference and it guided me in some way:
This is the part where I began paying more attention to poses than movement continuity, as in each frame of this reference image the character is in a completely different position than the previous, making up for something simple and ontuitive as throwing something.
These were my key poses of the throw and I was quite happy with it.
Playblast
This playblast was a development of my idea and it was not fully finished due to the ball issue, I did the animation as if the ball was parented to the hand but then I began questioning how was I going to do the ball loosing the air and getting stuck on his hand, looking at least a bit real. I wasn’t sure so I booked a meeting with alan for next week to discuss the possible solutions.
I am happy with my evolution in animation as this project would have been an impossible task a few months ago.