Week 8- Physicality Blocking

This week we finally got to block out our physicality assignment. I was really happy I did extensive planning because it really helped me with posing out the character and getting an idea for what frames things needed to be on. I put in more poses than I usually would on a blocking pass to really sell the idea and show myself that I could actually do it. Derek said that this idea was very bold and ambitious but I had good reference. He did suggest that I cut it off after she regains her balance at the end to simplify it a little bit. He also said I could probably cut out a flip or just do one and then she falls but if I really wanted to I could do all the flips and if it looks like it's going to be too hard I should cut back. I was determined so I decided to do all of them but simplify the end like he said. Here's how it turned out

Derek said it's a great first pass and it looks awesome. He said the mechanics looks right and I did a good job of translating the live action reference onto the character. His first suggestion was to add a moving camera so I could get her slightly bigger on screen. He also said that even though this is the first pose in the live action video, in the animation world this is not a good pose so I should take a little more artistic liberty with it to make it more interesting. Another note he gave was to exaggerate the how much she goes up in the air and how much she compresses down before she jumps to feel more animated. However I can't exaggerate everything because of the nature of what she is doing so I can't compromise the mechanics. He gave me some suggestions on where to exaggerate and where not to and gave me some notes on posing with a little artistic liberty. Another great note he gave was to really sell the changing spine shape from convex to concave and it'll create a nice contrast in the animation. I did have to be careful with this because gymnasts usually need to keep a pretty straight posture for what they're doing. So this was definitely going to be a challenging assignment. Make it animated and exaggerated but keep it real to what a gymnast would actually do.