This week, I started working on Assignment: Advanced Animation Shot (Blocking). My plan is to create an animation shot of a girl dancing, so at this stage I mainly focused on using the reference video to define the main actions, key poses, and overall rhythm.
During the blocking stage, I placed the reference video next to my animation and compared the character’s body poses with the dancer’s movements. Dancing is more complex than simple actions because it requires attention to body rhythm, weight shifts, and the coordination between the arms, pelvis, and torso. At this point, I have completed the rough key poses and the general direction of the movement.
Ting’s feedback was that the main problems in my animation were the pelvis rotation and body weight. This made me realise that the pelvis and centre of gravity are very important in dance animation. If the pelvis rotation is not accurate, or if the body weight is not properly placed on the supporting leg, the character can look unstable, stiff, or even like it is floating.