Process and Production: 6th - 12th March 2017

On Monday I completed shot 9 with the jaw slamming on the table. I am really happy with how this one turned out. The shake and bounce of items on the table really help to sell the impact. I did do one to many inbetweens than I thought worked for the drop of the jaw so I actually ended up deleting a frame. This made the jaw slam to the table in just a single frame space. This really makes it much more impact than before. 

We then had the final crit on the Tuesday. As I had not finished my animation, I filled the gaps with the animatic in order to tell the story. Feedback was very positive and people seemed to really enjoy the story. It was said that my animation was very smooth and moved naturally due to my use of reference footage and inbetweens. Other positive feedback came regarding the lip syncing, which people seemed to like. A few things that I was told could be improved was about shot 9. It was suggested that I make the shape of the jaw on the table a bit softer, so that the skin and fat spreads out when pressed against the table. This will make him feel more solid and sell the impact more. I agree with this and think I will do it because it will be quite a simple change to make. 

Another suggestion was on the final shot. Instead of having the man simply fall flat on his back, he should have his legs flung over his head, so he becomes really broken and injured. Since I haven't actually started this shot yet, I can still easily implement this. All this was good useful feedback that I will try to implement into my animation. 

I then went back to animating by doing the sketched keyposes for shot 11, which were quite easy as he will only be glancing a few directions very slightly. I did the linework for these poses before moving on and going back to shot 4. I still needed to finish the keyposes for the second half of this shot where he was fumbling about trying to catch the ring. I was simply struggling with this shot so much and it was taking so much longer than any other shot I had worked on with little progress, that I decided to change my idea slightly. Instead of him reacting and trying to catch the ring, I decided to extend the slow motion part into this shot and have his face frozen in shock as he follows the ring in the air shouting 'NOOO!!'. I thought that this could actually add some more comedy to the scene with this cliched 'NOO!' moment. After recording this extra line I had to edit the second half by drawing an awful lot of precise inbetweens in order to sell the slow motion effect. 

It is unfortunate that I have had to sacrifice the original idea due to this issue but I believe that this version actually works better. I'm very happy with the actual animation within it and it also lets the slow motion section hang for longer, which feels more natural. 

Now that I've finished all of the shots of the man, I am going back through to do all the linework of the womans shots. With only half a week left, I am just focusing on getting the idea of motion across as well as possible and only doing inbetweens if necessary and I have time. Thankfully, most of her shots aren't too complex. The worst is going to be her full body shot of her coming out of the toilets.