Week 13: Fine-Tuning and Camera Work

This week for Senior Portfolio, I continued working on timing, adjustments, overlapping motion, and camera work.

Continuing from last week, I made worked on the refining timing some more as the transition between the first and second attack felt too even and stiff. I found that by adjusting keys by something as small as a single frame, it made a world of a difference in how the second attack felt in regards to impact.

When adjusting the timing, I also realized that there was a lot that could be done to improve the movement of the tail and ears. Most of the movement on the tail was too stiff for the jump and attacks. I was a challenge to achieve some good momentum. I learned that adjusting the base of the tail little by little and off-setting the keys for the lower controllers of the tail makes for a smoother animation. I feel that this work is best seen in the last few keys of the animation.

Some minor adjustments I also made were to the ear controllers. I really wanted to emphasize a dragging motion on the ears when jumping and settling.

After adding in the camera and some keys to track the animation as it played, I found that I had to make some additional changes to the animation. Most of them were minor, mainly to appeal to the camera. These adjustments were done primarily to the ankle and feet controls, with some changes made to the wrists as well.

This week was a lot of touch ups and camera work. I want to improve the camera movement some more with slightly longer holds to allow for the animation to read better. This would be to address the issue of the camera moving and switching angles too quickly. If possible, I'd like to add some more tail movement as well.