Hare Animation Update 03

Hare Animation Update 03

Today I have 'completed' the hare animation inspired by toon.

Below is the final result. The idea is that the hare has jumped into the scene but has messed up his landing.

I am pleased with how this has turned out overall; I had a tough time today sorting out the head. Below is an earlier version of the animation before the head was fixed.

It happens too sudden and I generally had a lot of problems fixing it. It has a controller for the neck and one for the whole head area for some reason and this created confusion in the keyframes. I managed to fix it through just deleting keyframes and adding a lot more to keep the head where it is meant to be towards the end.

Frames

Below are my five frames that exaggerate the most. This first one is him stretching as he comes down for landing.

Here he is still stretching on his way down.

I stretched his arms out as he slid across the floor, I did this to make it look like his arms were reaching the stopping point before the rest of his body. I genuinely can't explain why this looks good but, to me, it just does.

I also exaggerated his legs as he was stopping to show that his feet kept moving towards the left for a little while after his body had stopped. I got some feedback from class mates saying his feet coming down and hitting the floor was happening too fast so I slowed them down as they get to around this frame below, then I kept the original speed for when they fall and smack the ground.

This is the exaggeration when the feet are falling to the ground. This sort of exaggeration was done using the graph editor.

Summary:

The intention of this animation was to explore toon as a possible style that I work towards for this project, I plan to do one more toon animation tomorrow and Friday as part of this exploration. 

I got bogged down early on while trying to figure out how to properly animate with a toon rig and my methods are probably not the best but I have achieved a toon animation I am pleased with.

I don't think I prefer toon over non-toon, I prefer animating realistically but with exaggerated performances. I will have my mentor meeting tomorrow where I will show this animation and discuss my feelings towards it. I'll see what happens then.