Blockout
We usually start by blocking out the animation, so we can get the main poses and timing right. For this stage, we set the interpolation mode to constant to help us focus on the main purpose of the blockout.
When working on more complex animations, we may need to break it down into secondary poses, and that process is like a second pass on the blockout process, but it wont be the case for this animation.
Polish
Once the main poses are set, we change the interpolation mode to Bezier to get a better idea of how the animation will look at the end and adjust the curves on the graph editor the get a better timing on the character’s movement.
Overlapping Action and Follow Through
To add some interest to the animation we have another step to go through. The orb and the rocks on top, the legs and the head are simply following the movement and rotation of the torso, but that is not very interesting, so we use on of the Disney’s 12 animation principles: overlapping action and follow through to make this a bit more realistic.
We demonstrate how to achieve this result in the video below:
Conclusion
To wrap up today's dev log we have this video that shows the different stages of this animation's process side by side.
Thanks for reading and let us know what aspect of Runewatch's development you would like to see covered on a future article
