Bullet Points:

• As he picks up his feet, his feet should be moving more in front of him and not underneath him.
• fr 80 to 90, smooth out arc to more of a U. More of a slower up, too. Right now it moves too fast.
• fr97 knee moves upward when leg is straight – fix plz
• fr110 foot needs to snap out there before the weight settle. Right now, it slows into right above the ground.
• fr190 instead of looking up, he stays looking at the poo
• fr50 work spacing to feel less like his foot is stuck
• Make him not step through the poo. Storywise, he needs to make more effort to avoid it. Feet further out on each step and arcs high enough to avoid it.

Don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense. It worked for me

The keyframes go from this: To this:

And after much, Much, MUCH wrangling of the spaghetti in that second picture, it’s resolved into this:

[qt:http://animation.redforty.com/uploads/2008/07/turn_blocking_235.mov 480 360]

. . .

Further refining the blocking pass with more sensible keyframes and breakdowns before I spline it.

[qt:http://animation.redforty.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/turn_blocking_234.mov 480 360]

. . .

Taking in account what I learned from Michelle Meeker, I went back to the drawing board (blocking). I put in way more keys than before. A helluva lot more breakdowns to hold those long poses. It’s not as easy as it seems, because in the world of the balancing act, there are no “real holds” – only living holds that need drift in them. For example, when Ballie gets up on one foot, he’s not entirely in balance. He’s swinging his weight from up on the foot back to the other. He just does it slowly so that it looks like a balancing act. Either way, here’s the blocking-plus pass:

[qt:http://animation.redforty.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/turn_blocking_005.mov 480 360]

This is my video reference:

[qt:http://animation.redforty.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/180turn_am.mov 480 360]