The use of video references is an invaluable thing to better understand the nature of movements, allowing us to create more interesting animations. It is pretty common to record ourselves to use references of facial expressions and gestures.

But what about action scenes? Normal people go for other people's references. Not this guy:

Saw it at Miro Souto's blog.

This was the exercise made for yesterday's class of Character Animation at PUC Minas. The goal of it was to show the animation principles applied in a rigged character (a preview of Otto 2, to be released as soon as I add a few more features and finish bug hunting): the use of reference footage, creation of Extreme and Breakdown poses, Timing, Arcs, Weight Shift and Anticipation.

It was also meant to demonstrate a simple audio/video editing within Blender Video Sequence Editor to add audio and postpro effects (the crack in the glass).

You can download all the files for this exercise here.

Yesterday was the second class of Character Animation at the Post-graduation program on Digital Games at PUC Minas. I'm teaching rigging and animation theory along with exercises to be applied by the students. They're very interested in learning, which makes everything easier. :)

Yesterday's setup exercise was based in this article by George Maestri, and involves the creation of a three-pivot IK leg setup: that allows the character to stand in its heel, ball of the foot or tip of the toes (like a ballerina). Here you can see the final .blend file.

Today, among other things, I'll be talking about how to apply Squash & Stretch to this setup, and also about IK-FK Switch. I must say our classes are based on Blender 2.49b. On 2.5, for example, Squash & Stretch is as easy as applying this new Constraint created by developer  Harkyman.

And to avoid making this post unnecessarily boring, I'll avoid be too stuck on the technical side. Today I saw on Cartoon Brew the trailer for The Illusionist, by Sylvain Chomet. This is - by far - the film I'm awaiting the most for this year:

Dear God! This blog was in hibernation mode!

The last time I wrote here was just after Christmas... A lot of explanations can be told about this, and all of them involve both the words "work" and "laziness".

Let's just assume this blog was recharging its batteries to bring some cool news in 2010. ;)

Among those there is the fact I'm the new professor of Character Animation at the Post-graduation program in Digital Games at PUC Minas! Next monday I'll fly to Belo Horizonte to the first classes, and we'll use Blender - of course. :)

I've seen some cool things to share with you here, and I'll show them in a gradual way in other posts so they get the attention they deserve. The first is this amazing Vimeo channel filled only with reference videos for animators. There you'll find precious pieces like this one below. This really should become a new bookmark for everyone:

See you in the next post. I promise I would not take so long this time.

Look at this fantastic music video made only with sounds and images of Up:

Saw it on leeunkrich's Twitter. Remember him? He is just a random guy who happens to be the director of Toy Story 3, among other things. ;)