I learned how to better convert blocking to polish before I made it to make it smoother.

I did a lot of dialogue content and blocking, but I didn’t end up having much time for polish, and most of my character animation for this dialogue was all with expressions and mouth shapes, and I found that I didn’t have enough expression content.

Reflection

Although I roughly completed some polished animations, I did not render these in full as I found that my level of character performance had not particularly improved from the previous year’s semester, only that I was more fluid in my manipulations and knew how to use curves and keyframe placement points.

During and after making it, I searched through many references and looked closely at it. I found that my character’s personality, and the exaggerated dramatic nature of my character were not obvious enough. Assuming I made my character more dramatic, it might have made my character more lively and alive. Here are the videos I watched during this process.

Although I didn’t do very well in this project and could have shown a brilliant animation control in my showreel, I feel relieved that I have found points to work on. Firstly, to learn from the good examples of other animators and see how other students bring out the drama and tension in their characters; secondly, in my final FMP assignment, which also requires the character to show tension, I can spend more time focusing on the dramatic conflict of the character and expressing it with body language as much as possible, instead of being so stagnant as I am now. Here are videos I’ve found of animation school students, so hopefully I can get to their level!