I opened up my wushu animation for the first time since midterms. I had gotten it about 85% finished by the time it was due. As usual, once I had it turned it, I felt burnt out on the project and didn’t much have the energy to finish it. Our teacher has really been encouraging us to keep bringing him updates each week so he can help us refine and finish the animations.

Today I felt the excitement again and jumped on in. I have some sections I need to refine and polish, but overall I felt something needed to be done about the timing. Where I had left off, both jumps felt the same as far as the beats are concerned. There was variation in height and action, but I felt they didn’t have enough contrast. I started playing with the timing of the first jump to see how it would feel. I really slowed things down going into the jump and then went back to “real time” as he comes out of the apex of the jump.

I really think it’s an improvement. Now when I watch it, I think both jumps stand out. Slowing down the timing of the first jump is going to give me a nice opportunity to play up his expressions in that section (now that you can see them!).

To do:

• Work on the first pose and anticipation. Possibly a transition A to B pose of him getting ready to move (cracking knuckles, stretching sorta thing).
• Fix the intro/outro of the second jump. The timing feels off a bit.
• Work on the last “hop”. Doesn’t feel right yet.
• Refine expressions and hand poses.
• Offset keyframes after everything else is done!

Here’s where I left off:
wushu midterm

Adjusting the timing of the first jump:
wushu refinement 01

Hmm, a bit of funkyness with PodPress. I’ll have to get that sorted out.