Week 6: More Poses!

This past week for Senior Portfolio, I worked on finding reference and blocking out additional poses. I got to experiment with some attempts of animating a spin in play with the Jacko rig but it did not go as planned. In attempting the movement, the eyes on the rig broke making the dog look cross-eyed. I ended up scraping the scene as a whole to start off from the previous iteration. What I was able to conclude for future reference, is that any extreme chest and hip rotations will be better off keyed on the world controller rather than the chest, hips, and COG.

Poses I was able to complete were a simple idle pose with a curious head tilt, a play bow with a bark, and an attempt of of sit position. For the play bow, I found some reference online of a Chihuahua doing a play bow. I found the reference to be really usefully, especially with the camera angle.

When blocking out the play bow, I wanted to add a bit of personality to the pose. To really nail the playfulness of the pup, I added a bark in the middle of the pose. I think that this came out really well overall. Later on when working on the timing a bit more, I'll add some holds on this pose in particular.

The sit/beg position that I'm attempting is a bit more difficult to approach. I was able to the rig in a way that the pose looks somewhat stable, I do feel that I need to go back and adjust the back legs for a more balanced pose. In addition, I need to adjust the pose of the front paws to have the 'elbows' pointed more downwards and the paw pads rotated more inwards.

Overall, I still need some more polishing up on the last pose and I'll be gathering some reference to block out a down and shake before reattempting a spin pose. These will be my goals for the next week and that I aim to complete for feedback during critique.