Last month I said that I was going to share a breakdown of my website redesign…Don’t worry, that’s still on the way! But there are a few more tweaks I still want to make to the site, so I’m pushing that back a tiny bit. For now, I want to share a new animation! This is another action-oriented shot, but this time I used a layered workflow. If you’ve been following my posts, you’ll know that I often switch between the layered workflow and the pose-to-pose workflow. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, but it’s been a while since I’ve done a layered one. So I gave it another shot!

There were a couple goals I had before making this motion. The first was to include more character-to-character interaction. It’s such an essential part of acting, so why not practice it a bit more!? I really loved animating the child with the pig in my pig walk-cycle from last year. So I basically wanted to channel that into a linear acting shot instead of a cycle. Last time it was a boy and a pig, this time around it’s a woman and a….duck deer!? You’ll see in second!

My second goal was to include more dynamic camera work. Almost all of my animations have had a pretty static camera. I usually include a little camera movement here and there so I can most focus on the character animation. But if you think about some of your favorite animated films, you’ll probably remember scenes that have a moving camera. So my goal was to try that here, at least a little bit. To help with that, I’m using a custom camera rig created by Josh Janousky. This rig basically allow me to animate the camera movements much like I would with a character. This way I can pan, tilt, zoom, dolly, tracking, crane, etc just by adding keyframes to the rig’s different controls. It’s a great rig!

Those were my goals, and here’s the result; The Duck Deer Escape (with sound)!

If you want to see a little bit of the layering process, here’s a shot progression reel:

I feel like I completed most of my goals with this one, and I like how it turned out! I could’ve been more dynamic with the camera, but I’ll work my way there. Even with this small amount of camera movement, I still had a bit of trouble keeping the characters readable. Between their fast movements and the camera’s, some of the motion blurs together. In the future, I’ll definitely need to include a few more moments of visual rest to contrast the quicker actions. Absolutely something to practice!

A huge thank you to Eline and Samarth Kapoor for giving me important feedback throughout the process. Here’s the SyncSketch link if you want to see their notes!

And thank YOU so much for reading!

Penny Flick Rig by Tim Bogomolov
Duck Deer Rig by Emilio Serrano
JoshCam Rig by Josh Janousky

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