So, it's been a while since my last personal animation project but i felt like the time was right to do another one again. It's been tough to find the time alongside work but i'm having a lot of fun! Hopefully it will be finished soon and look half decent.
I began as per usual by sketching out some ideas and then filming some acting reference. Once I was happy with my performance I blocked out the shot in maya. However, there was a particular part of the scene where my character just felt really off. The performance wasn't as clear as it needed to be. Since I wasn't sure how to approach the issue in maya I began to explore more options through thumbnailing.
The result was the picture below: .
(the animation reads left to right too)
I thumbnailed an exaggerated version of my reference which really helped my understanding of the mechanics and the performance that I wanted to achieve. Now I could have done this in maya but it would have taken an awful lot longer.
I took these exploratory thumbnails and then re-blocked it into my scene. The result turned out to be a bit too exaggerated but that was okay because it's much easier to tone down an exaggerated animation than ramp one up. Anyway, this thumbnail process is very helpful and I highly recommend it for people to use it in their projects too!!
