Week 8: Animated Slip 2.0

 This week for Advanced Production I decided to reapproach the Slip and Toss animation from previously shots 11 and 13, now shot 12. I recorded reference for this new animation by falling backwards onto my bed and using a small rectangular box. The video itself is very brief but served as the base for the upper body movement of shot 11.

Using this reference, I made a similar blockout of poses from my previous one. Instead of creating a lot of poses suspended in the air, I kept the body close to the ground while keeping a consistent line of action on the legs as they 'slip' on the rug pulled under him.

As I had UPS David carry the box by his side, I focused most on my time on the hand movement tossing or 'pushing' the box away from himself. The trickiest rotations for this movement was the elbows and shoulders, especially on the arm holding the box.

Creating the poses for the fall backwards was also challenging with the shape of the back. While I wanted to push the speed and arc of the fall, bending to the back too much would decrease the amount of time I needed to fit the toss in while he's falling. Luckily, I found a pose that would read best as a slip and without too much airtime.

The second (somewhat) challenge were the rotations of the box. I don't use a parent restraint or similar on the box but rather, the movement is keyframed to follow the hand. This is typically tedious but I found it easier to keep that way for the toss. This also worked in my favor since I'm also able to control the acceleration of the box toss to slow it down and make it read as a box with some weight.

For this shot, I chose to do it with two different cameras. One to get the full body slip and the second to get a close up of the toss. I feel that I did complete the goal I had set for myself this week to scrap and redo the slip and toss. Next week, I'll see out feedback and polish up my pervious shots before starting to spline the slip and toss animation.