This is basically a “sequel-post” to October’s blog about unfinished animations. In that entry, I talked about why it’s important to leave some projects unfinished and move on. Eventually there’s a point of diminishing returns where you cease learning and start obsessively tweaking your work. When this starts happening, it’s often best to finish things up as best as you can and use what you’ve learned for something new.

The animation I want to share today is another example of a project I abandoned. But this time there’s a twist! I decided to go back and finish the job. The goal wasn’t to start over, it was to take what already existed and improve upon it. This was going to be especially challenging since I originally created this animation using a much looser workflow than I use now. These days I primarily use a pose-to-pose workflow that emphasizes progressive spacing. This makes splining and refining the motion much easier later in the process. But when I first created this animation, I hadn’t quite figured that out.

Back in 2021 I was following Chiara Porri’s animation exercise list. At that point, I had finally reached the second to last prompt; animate a laugh. After taking a look at some online resources on the topic, I filmed some reference and got right to work. I decided to use Perry Leijten’s slick Samus Rig for this one. I had previously used just the arm for my acting with a prop animation. But I wanted to see what the full rig could do.

The prompt was very open ended, so I decided to give the laugh a bit of narrative context. As you progress through the Metroid games (which this character rig is from), Samus acquires different beams for her arm cannon. Each beam is basically a new attack you can use against enemies. My idea was this; what if Samus found a new beam, but it wasn’t quite what she expected? Here’s the final result (with sound!):

The main challenge I faced throughout working on this was deciding how exaggerated the laugh should be. This is ultimately why I abandoned the project the first time. Throughout the process, the motion became more and more exaggerated and unrealistic. While exaggeration is one of animation’s strengths, use too much and the motion becomes unappealing. Making sure the torso and head movement felt physically possible for the character was something I lost sight of.

Take a look at this shot progression reel. You’ll notice that the laugh starts very subtly but gets progressively more exaggerated with each iteration. Then it gets toned back down for the last attempt.

The “spline” iteration was where I left the project back in 2022. I knew I had overdone the torso motion, but I just didn’t have time to fix it. I’d eventually revisit the laugh prompt with a much different animation later on.

When I returned to this project, I had to do a lot of reworking. I hadn’t used proper progressive spacing when I originally created the blocking pass. As a result, I needed to modify the spacing of several key-frames to achieve the timing I was looking for. I also reduced the length of the laugh and tried to tone down the torso and head movement. It’s still not quite as subtle as it was in the original blocking, but it’s a big improvement over the original spline. I’m still undecided on whether it’s toned down enough though.

As I was reworking this, I needed to remind myself of the challenge here. It was to take what already existed and improve upon it. Ideally I would’ve deleted whole sections and started them from scratch. But that wasn’t the assignment, and I definitely didn’t have time for that. So given those constraints, I think I did the best I could!

If you’d like to see the feedback I received on this animation, check out the SyncSketch project. A huge thank you to users Julian Kuntz, Oub, and M Equiv for the helpful notes!

Thanks so much for reading, and take care!

Samus Rig by Perry Leijten
Maya Viewport VFX by Shadrak Guichard-Foster

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