My very first (proper) character animation. Modelled and rigged be me. Original character design. I call him Dmitri :). Took around 2.5 hrs to animate. It’s an animation of him fire bending as seen in many TV shows, however, i had him as a proxy link and couldn’t make new vertex groups to set as an emitter for the fire, so no fire in this animation.
My first try at animating a humanoid. My previous try here doesn’t count because that wasn’t a proper rig.
I do think he “under-acts”, if you know what I mean. He looks a bit like a robot, and the body definitely needs much more movement and anticipation. The movement of the feet look strange, the legs are too straight, the body stays in the same position for the entire animation. The right arm makes a turn, but the right shoulder/upper body stay in the same position, which is incorrect. There is also a lack of overlap in all movements, and no sense of weight and anticipation.
Also, I would expect him to rotate his entire upper body to the right (left shoulder forward), push his shoulders up a bit (tense), place his right foot further back and move his weight to that right foot in anticipation. Then when he shoots his kamehameha really push his weight forward, with his left foot jumping forward, right leg stretched, left leg buckling his knee, pushing his upper body forward, rotating it back to straight position, and stretching both his arms.
So. this is a good first attempt - now continue to add movement to the rest of the body. His hair looks a little odd - animate that at the very end once you have all the body movement finished. The hair should follow the movement of the rest of the body (secondary action).
Shoot some reference with your camera: have a friend “do the kamehameha”, and film it. Check out all the body’s movements - you cannot animate this well without good reference.
Nicely put there Herbert! However, it definitely seems like his first try, so I’d rather let him explore a bit loosely in the beginning and find out a few things himself.
