Responsive Collaboration: Animation Progress

Today I have been working on rigging characters that Tyler has recently completed, in After Effects. I was able to drop the Mother character into my first scene test and scale her according, to see what the composition would now look like with her in it.

Scene One Test

To make sure the timings were correct with our animatic, I imported the audio into the project file so that I could animate the Mother accordingly. I think it works well, but I would like to hold the last pose for a little bit longer before it changes scene, just so it doesn't seem to cut too abruptly. I also think it would also be worth revisiting Jack's arm for this scene. The motion of him waving looks fine, but his arm doesn't rest naturally when he is walking and standing still. 

In our last meeting, it was mentioned that it might be nice to adjust the colour scheme of the kitchen as it seems to dull in comparison to our other scenes. I did just that today, and I also tried out different textures to make the setting more interesting and consistent with the rest of our tests. 

New Kitchen Environment

Test Animation

I imported the scene into After Effects to see how well it could be composed as 3D layers, and also to adjust the proportions of the chairs in comparison to the table. Once I was happy with this, I added the Mother to the composition to see how she would sit at the table. I realised that because of the way the 3D layers were positioned, I could either only have her hands on top of the table or below it. To get around this, I made the character 2D and duplicated the table layer, one of which was positioned above the character's arms. When her hand moved above the edge of the duplicated layer, I changed its opacity to 0%, so it appeared as though she was moving her hand from under the table and resting on it. The only issue with working in this way is when I make any camera movements - because she is a 2D layer - she will not move with the rest of the scene and instead will stay where she is. I will need to either come up with a solution to this problem, or simply reconsider using camera movements in this scene, and I will decide upon this when I am able to import Jack into the scene.