Door Gag

Status: In Progress

Rig Credit: Stewart from Animation Mentor 

Software: Maya 2018

LATEST VERSION: Third (?) Splining Pass

1/30/18

After some thought as to what I would do next, I decided to try a more intensive body mechanics exercise with a door gag.

With the help of a friend, I shot a reference video of myself with the gag in mind. (I need to get better at acting....)

After studying this for a bit, I proceeded to create a (very) rough blocking pass to try to get basic positions and timing out. This took about 2hrs. 

There's a lot that I need to work on, especially the timing of the latter half, before I can move into more polished posing. But it feels like a good start. 

1/31/18

I got some feedback on the improving the timing and playing up the exaggeration of body humor. I had a friend of mine (Yujin Ariza) take a stab at the gag for an additional reference video.

I wasn't able to get too much further today on this due to other obligations. 

2/1/18

After working the walk cycle for a couple hours, I took another pass at the the door gag to work out some of the timing and to add a bit of additional body humor. 

2/2/18

This evening was figuring out the IK/FK controls for the wrists and fine tuning some of the body movement when hanging from the door. I think I overshot some parts of it, I need to review the reference video again... Unsure whether I will keep the additional gesture of him putting his hand on his face at the end.

2/4/18

Terrified of tomorrow's work, I think I'm at a point where this guy is ready to start being splined out... This is going to be great! Feeling pretty proud of the progress so far. 

2/6/18

I took a step back from this shot to work on a walk pass with a more complex rig, and returned to tackle Stewart and this door gag joke again. 

Deep breath, aaaaand.... SPLINE! 

This is where I arrived after tweaking curves a bit. Will return for a deep dive into cleaning up the curves tomorrow, there's a lot to do to make the movements look natural.  

2/13/18

I took some time to clean up a lot of his lower body splining. Planning on adjusting the walk so he looks more cocky as he comes to the door as well, especially after cleanup continues to progress. This is starting to feel pretty good to me. 

3/8/18

There's a ridiculous amount happening in school aside from this project... It's becoming more difficult to find periods of time to get into a flow state and work on this project. I sat down today and worked to sharpen some of his movements and gestures, especially to convey a greater sense of weight and force when he's pulling. I focused particularly on his hip motion and back curves. 

I'm learning so many little things as I work at this, it's amazing. I fought the urge to start right over and redo/clean up the shot from scratch, but there's some things I feel like are working well and I want to keep cleaning it up.