New rig animation test

It's been a while since I posted anything on here and that is all down to me being too busy doing the day job. Throughout the Covid-19 lock-down I've been animating flat out but have managed to spend some time in the evenings and weekends animating this test for one of the main characters in the film. As is always the case this only needed to be a short exercise, but ended up being a 33 second beast, and I spent longer than I care to admit on choosing the song he tries to sing to. The plan is to get this shot into Unreal as soon as the engine friendly rig is finished, which hopefully wont be too long, and I will then post those renders here too! 

 I have a few versions of the shot to show from blocking to final just to show the process, but it has to be said that you wouldn't always work like this on a live production where you change parts of the shot significantly in the latter stages.  You'd normally try to nail this down in the blocking stage, but it is fun to tweak things as many times as it needs when it's a personal project to make sure it is as strong as possible. It also highlights how getting feedback is vital to make sure everything reads as intended because the animation process is such a slow one where you spend weeks looking at the same shot, you often can't see the wood for the trees, and need an extra pair of eyes is essential to point out glaring problems which you simply can't see anymore. These issues could be to do with timing, shot clarity or something that you thought is funny...just isn't. My go to man here is Andy Lavery, a colleague who I've done several projects with in the past, and has a very polite way of telling me if stuff is looking crap. 

So here is a block version of the shot which contains all the main key poses that need to be there as well as any breakdown poses that help sell the action. The test had to put the rig through its paces and I tried to push the mouth rig as far as it needed to go. So So with the first pass block the first 13 or so seconds was fine (apart from needing to shift the Karaoke machine slightly to the left to create some negative space between it and the character) but we felt he got happy a bit too quickly as if he already knows what the machine is. It made more sense for him to have a bit of an incling but be slightly unsure until he turns it on. Adding a little tap of the mic confirms what he hoped it would be, and then he gets really excited! This thought process felt a lot more believable than what was there in the first pass. He then tosses the mic from hand to hand before going into the song because he's got his confidence up and nothing it going to spoil his day now. So here's the second pass block... It It all hopefully works better with a more clear thought process from the character. The only part that felt a bit weak was the ending. It was a shame to do all this work and not finish with a punchline so I polished up the shot and added the gun misfire and reaction. Next problem was that the gun firing was lost in his movement and his reaction at the end felt really weak. So after some more tweaking we got this... With there being a bit more of a delay before the gun goes off, it now reads much better and to add to his sense of panic, because lets face it if your head ballooned up to that size you'd be slightly concerned too, he now frantically tries in vain to close the visor which can't get past his huge melon. His reaction at the end though feels a bit weak and makes no sense considering he was panicking a few seconds ago. So it was revised again to get this... This ending felt much stronger, and more in keeping with the character too. So happy days. The sound also needs to be added which we'll get to at a later date but the good news is it reads without it. 

Obviously it all needs rendering, so the next step, once the Unreal Engine compatible rig is finished, is to render the sucker in real-time and see how it all comes together. What could possible go wrong.