Project Progress: Blocking and Sketches

The time has come! It's time to put the pedal to the metal and begin animating!!! I took a little bit from each reference I created and sketched out some of my favorite poses. I then translated them into maya. I can now proceed forward with my workflow or order of operations. (see below)

My current animation workflow

While I am thankful to be working in Maya now, I cannot stress enough the importance of planning and gathering references. I really drive that point across when teaching my students. Planning out your shot/scene/film is nearly identical to building the foundation of a house. Without a solid foundation everything begins to topple over and fall apart. The more air-tight your planning is the less issues you will have when you begin to work. That being said it's inevitable that you will encounter issues as you work but this mindset minimizes the amount of trouble you will have.

Here we have my sketches of the key poses I plan to implement in my shot. Alongside the reference video.

And then the poses are transferred to Maya

As for the composition of the shot, I am thinking about trying a different angle, but for the sake of transferring the poses I used the same angle from my references. More research to come!