Alisha L Animation (LAU): Extended Practise: Kingdom of Masks Inbetweening Process

Extended Practise

Kingdom of Masks Inbetweening Process

I found Scene 22 one of the trickiest scenes to inbetween on this project, so far. Therefore, this scene challenged me a lot. I found it difficult to animate the Mask Maker walking up over the hill, towards the camera, whilst also thinking about the movement of the sword and the cape and his hair. I also needed to understand his walk cycle and how his feet and legs will be in relation to the rest of his body placement.
Here are Emily's keyframes for this scene:

Emily had keyed this mainly on 5s and 6s, therefore I broke the betweening down to 2s. I struggled a bit to understand how certain parts of his body would be eased and timed, especially with how much was happening in this one scene, however I think I managed well to make it feel fluid.
I used The Animators Survival Kit to help me understand the smear frames, as he sword had greater movements between only one or two frames, so I wanted to make it feel like a fast swing. In the Survival Kit, Richard Williams refers to it as the "Elongated Inbetween" which is from the blur effect of motion from live-action footage. It also creates an effect of a movement or motion being fast.
Here is what I tired and my final inbetweens:

Scene 22 Inbetweens

The perspective and fore-shortening of the sword is a little off, in relation to the placement of the camera, as the perspective would be as though the camera is right under the tip of the sword, which isn't the case. Although, this may be intentional for exaggerated purposes.
As the sword was quite difficult to inbetween, as it changes angle and perspective a lot, there are some frames where the Mask Maker's hand moves or the sword changes in size slightly. I would consider this in the future by keying more of the swords frames, after I've inbetweened the body and arms.

Alisha L Animation (LAU)