The Flour Sack

Just a quick post about my progress with the flour sack. This is HARD WORK. I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way, in fact I think i'm enjoying it, but it's almost 8 o'clock and i've been in the studio all week and i'm about half way done. It's going well though, I feel like the sack has some character, even though he's only walked a few steps at the minute. The technical side of it is a bit messy; i'm sure i'm doing quite a few things wrong (or at least going about doing them the hard way, my graph editor is hilariously messy) but these are mistakes i'll just have to make until I learn how to do them the right way. I'm happy with the amount that i'm learning at the minute, and i'm just about managing to pull the animation off the way I want to. I'm feeling very motivated, not just in this task but in general and it's lasted for a week or so already and still going, rather than the occasional flicker. I'm trying to do and learn as much as I can, I know I need to be like this to get a good job and all that crap. Hopefully it'll last. Anyway, Here's the sack so far:



UPDATE 01/05/08: Spent today getting as much done as possible after the storyboard session (which I actually enjoyed :o) and i've come a little way. Today was the most frustrating day for me so far, but only because of a short period of time where I completely messed up my character's ears in the section I was working on. They completely spazzed out and I couldn't figure out why, which led me to restart from a previous save, losing a short part of my work. I don't really mind, it's probably better off for losing it. Now my character is ready to jump, but i'm undecided which route to choose. Either the sack will puff up his chest and bravely jump off, or close his non-present eyes tight and throw himself off the edge. The first option is quite a change in the personality of the character, which is why i'm hesitant to choose it, but to be frank it's probably easier and I only have one day left. The second is more in-keeping with the sack's cowardly character but i've had some problems with the ears and they'd have to be used quite a lot showing the 'scrunched up' reluctancy of him. Since I only have one more day to complete him i'll probably choose the first option and deal with the inconsistencies. He is only a sack after all. They can't be that intelligent.

UPDATE 2/05/08: Done :D It's not bad either, I decided to go with the superman off the edge and it looks okay. The anticipation is a little dodgy (I couldn't get a really big squish before the jump without it looking funny) but I put that down to the rig being poor/me being poor at controlling the rig properly. Same with the ears, I would've liked to have animated them a little more or a little better, but I just found the ears in particular so difficult. Two out of the three rings around the ears seemed to have very little control over the ear itself, and the other seemed a little irrational. Due to this I kept the ear movements down to a minimum but what I have is okay. Surprisingly I haven't really felt forced to complete this animation. There have been times (but only very few) where I felt frustrated with it, but apart from that it's been reasonably pleasant, and i've just got on with it at my own pace. I still have time which I could use to tinker around with it, but I think i'll call it a day and wait for my next project :) Here's the finished animation: