Applied Animation: Documentary - Fenrir Keyframes and Betweens 2

Applied Animation

Fenrir Keyframes and Betweens 2

• This week:
• I worked on more scenes for Fenrir, focusing on Keyframes and betweens.
• What went well:
• Before the puppet animation, there is a short shot where Fenrir anticipates leaping up to break the chains. I wanted to spend time making sure this was done before focusing on the puppet animation, for the rest of this week.
• I used several references of dog movements to help me to understand how Fenrir could lift himself up. I wanted it to seem like he was pushing on his front weight, before shifting the weight to his hind legs, as the references I had looked at seemed to demonstrate this when dogs try standing up. I wanted him to remain in a crouch, however, so when I used references, I needed to keep this in mind.

This reference doesn't have a similar angle, but it did help me to understand this transfer of body weight:

• I started by keyframing the head movements, with the body and tail on separate layers. When I showed my group my progress, they suggested making the head lowering as one smooth movement, which is what I then changed.

Head movement before:

Smoothed head movement:

• I additionally noticed that if it was going into the next shot, which is the slow motion, their may need to be additional frames to just show Fenrir lifting the front half of his body. I was able to then smooth out the animation for the body and tail.

• What could be improved:
• The movement of the last few frames of Fenrir lifting up needs to be adjusted for timing, which I will look at for the rest of this week.
• The chain animation needs adding, to remain consistent with the previous shot of him, in addition to the colouring and shading.
• The rest of this week:
• I'll be fixing any movements and then colouring, shading and adding any additional VFX to the animation.