![\"sketch1\"](\"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/sketch1.jpg\" "\\"sketch1\\"")
<\/a>![\"sketch2\"](\"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/sketch2.jpg\" "\\"sketch2\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n(By the way, when shooting video reference for something like this, you must<\/em> use a truly heavy box.\u00a0 If you\u2019re only pretending a box is heavy, your weight won\u2019t shift realistically.\u00a0 When you pick up a heavy box, you shift your weight to stay in balance.\u00a0 If you shifted your weight that much with a box that is actually very light, you would fall down and go boom.)<\/p>\n OK, so we have nine poses there.\u00a0 That should work nicely, yes?\u00a0 There are some balance issues with a few of those (I\u2019m not a great 2D artist), such as the last two, in which the feet are displaced too far in front of the hips.\u00a0 But oh well!\u00a0 Just as long as we don\u2019t make those same mistakes in 3D.\u00a0 I might another pose between the last two with him lifting up his front leg to help him get a grip on the box while he slides that front hand forward.\u00a0 I had it in the video reference, but it didn\u2019t make it to my sketches for some reason, but it could add some extra believability.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what we\u2019re starting with:<\/p>\n Our character in his T-pose.\u00a0 Boring.\u00a0 But I added a green hat and a brown box.\u00a0 Maybe he works for UPS and this is his last shipment of the day.\u00a0 He\u2019s tired, but he\u2019s happy this is the last piece of work for the day.\u00a0 And it\u2019s Friday and he gets the weekend off, so in a way he\u2019s even a bit excited.\u00a0 I also moved the camera to a bit more of an angle so it\u2019ll be easier to see both legs at the same time.<\/p>\n OK, pose #1.\u00a0 He\u2019s looking down at the box, slightly hovering over it, getting a quick idea of its size and shape.\u00a0 Oh, one thing we need to think about is whether to IK the spine or not.\u00a0 In my last class, I always did; it just seemed to make animating something like a back flip or a quick slip easier.\u00a0 But here we know we\u2019re going to have our box resting right on torso by the final few poses, so the spine will really have to bend around the box.\u00a0 So, for this shot, I think we\u2019ll keep the spine in FK.\u00a0 Besides, I should get some practice with FK spines anyway, yes?<\/p>\n OK, here\u2019s what I got:<\/p>\n We\u2019ll change the lighting and the exact camera framing later (the shadow on his spherical head look terrible and hides his eyes).\u00a0 The front hand was hard to place; for the sake of an easier-to-read silhouette, I\u2019ve placed it farther back and a little more outward than someone in real life probably would.\u00a0 Other than that, I think it\u2019s OK for now.<\/p>\n Pose #2 is quite a change.\u00a0 His feet come forward, he bends way down, and he places both hands on the box, preparing to tilt it forward to see how much it weighs and to get a grip underneath the box.\u00a0 But for pose #2, he\u2019s just putting his hands on the box; he\u2019s not yet applying any force to it.<\/p>\n This was a difficult pose because the guy gets into such a little scrunched up form, yet we still want the position of the arms and legs to be clear.\u00a0 It\u2019s posing a form like this that really makes the character\u2019s wacky geometry noticeable. His arms really are barely long enough to be wrapping themselves around a box that size, and he has to tilt his big old head way up there to prevent himself from smashing into the box.\u00a0 (I could\u2019ve just changed the box\u2019s size easily enough, but I wanted to treat this shot as if I had been assigned it in a feature film and did not have that option.)\u00a0 In my sketches, I had the hips much higher in pose #2, but here Stewie (as the character is called) has to have his hips farther down so that the arc of the spine can look OK without Stewie\u2019s head going into the box.\u00a0 The back leg is a challenge because we want its position to be clear, yet there\u2019s so much stuff in front of it that can block it and intersect with it.<\/p>\n Pose #3 is very similar:<\/p>\n As we can see, the hands stay mostly the same (I did move the fingers around just a bit, especially the thumbs).\u00a0 The back foot comes forward.\u00a0 The hips go up and tilt up so that Stewie does not hit himself in the chin while tilting the box forward.\u00a0 The back arm is kept straight.\u00a0 Hopefully this will look much better with lighting so we can get some shadows on the ground.<\/p>\n Pose #4 mainly consists of Stewie shifting his hands.\u00a0 He\u2019s not yet lifting the box, but he\u2019s preparing to.\u00a0 The box is now tilted forward, so he can slide his front hand down to the bottom and wrap his fingers around the edge.\u00a0 The back hand will slide to the other side, out of view.\u00a0 While we\u2019ll have to worry about that back hand\u2019s position for the sake of the section of the back arm that the audience can see, we won\u2019t have to worry about it\u2019s rotation or the curl of the fingers; they will be invisible, so who cares?<\/p>\n Pose #4 and #5 are really combined here.\u00a0 The original intent was to have pose #4 show mostly just the hand shifts, and pose #5 would show the downward movement of the hips.\u00a0 But due to Stewie\u2019s wacko anatomy and short arms (compared to the size of the box), he has to move his hips just to be able to reach the bottom of the box; he can\u2019t shift his hands without moving hips.\u00a0 This is obviously going to be sheer torture to animate!\u00a0 I originally also wanted to keep his spine in the same sort of curve as the previous poses, but that would case his head to go through the box, so his spine is going to have to change curve directions for this pose.<\/p>\n As we can also see, the back arm is completely hidden from view, except for just the very upper part of it, which we can see attached to the shoulder, so the placement does<\/em> matter, though the curling and rotation of the fingers does not.\u00a0 I\u2019m also cheating with the arm; it\u2019s actually intersecting with the box.\u00a0 But it\u2019s out of view, so who cares?<\/p>\n The back foot and leg was also quite tricky.\u00a0 We don\u2019t want them completely hidden from view, yet there\u2019s hardly any room to show them.\u00a0 I think what we\u2019ve got here might work, but I\u2019m still not 100 percent happy with it.\u00a0 What other solutions are there?\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure at the moment.<\/p>\n OK, on to pose #6.\u00a0 This will be fun; Stewie is now actually lifting the box.\u00a0 We will have to shift his hips back to keep him in balance.\u00a0 His hands will pretty much be in the same position, though perhaps we can shift the front hand forward a bit for a better grip.<\/p>\n OK, so he only shifted his hand a little.\u00a0 And I curled the very end of his back hand around the back edge of the box, so you can just see it.\u00a0 A nice touch, perhaps?\u00a0 Or perhaps it makes his arm look too long on that side?\u00a0 Eh, we\u2019ll leave it in for now anyway and we\u2019ll see what my mentor says.<\/p>\n At first glance, this pose looks so similar to the last one, you might think it was quite simple to pose.\u00a0 On the contrary; I found it the most difficult to pose yet, for two reasons: firstly, Stewie\u2019s anatomy is just too small to pick up a box that size.\u00a0 If you see the pose from another angle, you\u2019d realize how much cheating is going on just to get that front arm to look OK and not intersect with the box.\u00a0 That back arm is going almost completely through the box, and, as you can probably see by the position of Stewie\u2019s shoulders, Stewie is really standing to the front side of the box.\u00a0 Who would ever pick up a box like that?\u00a0 Secondly, getting the balance right took forever.\u00a0 We really have to do it by eye, and it\u2019s almost like trying to draw a perfect circle; it always seems to look just a bit off and you feel like you could just sit there and tweak it forever.\u00a0 A little back, a little forward, no, back again, a bit to the side, etc.\u00a0 On and on.\u00a0 It is easy to go mad.\u00a0 At a quick glance, I think what we have here is at least good enough to move on to the next pose, but part of me still feels like something is still a bit off, still a bit out of balance.\u00a0 Oh well; we do have a due date, so let\u2019s move on.<\/p>\n Oh, I also don\u2019t like the position of the back foot and leg; they are too hard to see.\u00a0 However, I didn\u2019t want to move the feet at all for this pose; Stewie is picking up the box, after all.\u00a0 I can\u2019t imagine someone one change his footing too much as he\u2019s just starting to pick up a box.<\/p>\n Again, getting some light and shadows in the final renders should help; right now it\u2019s difficult to tell how high he\u2019s lifting the box.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the pose from another angle, showing all the cheating being done:<\/p>\n Yikes!<\/p>\n OK, on to pose #7.\u00a0 The trick with #7 is that Stewie has lifted the box up past his waist.\u00a0 In our last pose, Stewie is lifting the box with his arms and spine the most; in pose #7, he\u2019ll be using more leg power to stand all the way up again, but he\u2019ll also be changing the direction of the curve in his spine and using his arms to the bring the box in closer to his chest (so that, obviously, it will lean on his chest, and he\u2019ll be thankful he\u2019s not a woman).<\/p>\n This pose wasn\u2019t quite as time consuming, but the balancing act was still tricky, and I\u2019m still not sure I\u2019ve got it quite right.\u00a0 I also rotated the front foot out a bit to make the outline of the leg clearer, plus a foot between those two poses might add a touch of believability to the animation.\u00a0 Similarly, I moved the back foot forward a bit, so that the leg didn\u2019t look so much like it was coming out of the hand.\u00a0 We still want to keep Stewie balanced, so there\u2019s only so far we can move the foot like that, obviously.<\/p>\n Again, there\u2019s some major cheating going behind the front of the box there.\u00a0 Perhaps next week we\u2019ll take out the tiny portion of the back hand that\u2019s visible; it looks like he might need to have that hand on the bottom of the box at this point, instead of way over there.\u00a0 But I\u2019m not sure.<\/p>\n My favorite thing I did here was to lower that front shoulder and tilt it towards the camera a bit; it really makes it look like Stewie is putting some effort into keeping that side of the box up, which could be some good setup for pose #8.\u00a0 It gives the tiny portion of the back arm some room to be seen, and helps make the outline of the front arm more visible.<\/p>\n All right, I think only two more poses are really needed.\u00a0 In pose #8, Stewie will have his back more straightened out, really standing up as tall as he can with such a large object.\u00a0 But to help him get a better grip with his front hand, he\u2019s going to bring his front leg up a little and let the box rest on it just for a second so he can shift his arm easily.\u00a0 Which means \u2013 a one leg balancing act.\u00a0 Oh boy.\u00a0 Ugh.<\/p>\n The invisible hand behind the box is really way out there.\u00a0 Perhaps next week I will use FK on that back arm; we really just need to control how that little upper portion of it that\u2019s visible looks, and doing it with IK means animating the upper arm by animating the hand, which could become frustrating.\u00a0 Also, if we light this scene, our messed up hidden half might show in the shadows.\u00a0 But we won\u2019t worry about that this week, I suppose.<\/p>\n So there\u2019s our pose #8.\u00a0 The box is really close to Stewie now, he\u2019s really brining it in close.\u00a0 In my original sketches, I had planned to have Stewie hold the box from the outer bottom corner, but his arms are just to short, and stretching them looks ridiculous.\u00a0 So instead I think we will have Stewie hold the upper part of the box, more like he is now, but we\u2019ll try to straighten out his arm if we can.\u00a0 I hope it is clear what Stewie is doing: bringing up his leg to help shove upwards so he can get the box into his final grip so he can carry it somewhere (good thing I\u2019m not animating him walking with the box \u2013 yet).\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty nice having that back hand completely hidden and not having to worry about it, yes?<\/p>\n OK, one more pose.\u00a0 In pose #9, Stewie will be in his final position, the box firmly resting on his chest, Stewie leaning back a little bearing the weight and ready to walk around with the package.<\/p>\n As always, the balance was tricky to get, and every time I look at the pose from a different angle, it feels just a bit off balance somehow.\u00a0 But you have to stop tweaking eventually.\u00a0 Here we\u2019ve got a straight in the front arm, just like I wanted, running across the top edge of the box, something I didn\u2019t exactly plan for, but I think it will work since Stewie\u2019s arms are too short and my box is too big for Stewie to the reach the opposite corner.\u00a0 As you can see, we also have Stewie\u2019s fingers from his back hand just barely visible on the underside of the box.\u00a0 Stewie\u2019s spine is mostly straight and leaning back, so Stewie is bearing a lot of weight on his chest.<\/p>\n And \u2013 I think that\u2019s pretty much it!<\/p>\n Finally, let\u2019s render those eight poses with mental ray.\u00a0 It takes longer to render, but it can put in some simple shadows we couldn\u2019t get before.\u00a0 (And we don\u2019t even have to set up lights, woohoo!)<\/p>\n Hmmm.\u00a0 That white ground with the green hat and brown package makes him look more like an elf.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s it for this week!\u00a0 Hopefully I\u2019ll continue to blog like this as I continue my assignments, but who knows.\u00a0 I\u2019m often busy and tired.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I thought that this semester of Animation Mentor might be more interesting if I did a little more online chronicling of the work I put into an exercise.\u00a0 For the next few weeks, I\u2019m working on animating a box lift.\u00a0 This will help me practice a few things: going from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[220],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7gI4B-dK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":853,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions\/853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n