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This video includes my final animation shot.

overall, I think it is okay on a basic level. There is plenty more things I could have done to make this much better and far more appealing.

Looking back at the video now, I can see that there is still some mistakes and wasted opportunities to use more animation principles.

A few issues accrued towards the end of my animating. After taking it into spline, I noticed it moves as if it has been slowed down and the characters look a bit stiff. Keyed in limbs had shifted to places I did not originally key them.
At that moment, I was running out of time before hand in and decided to do the best I could by deleting certain keys and re-doing the key poses, before I made it worse trying to fix it due to the issues with the rigs going haywire at random intervals, and from moving into spline.

That being said, in reflection of where I started on my animation journey 4 years ago, I feel that I have come a long way. This is not the best and, yes, I could have done much better, however I am proud of myself for coming this far. I enjoyed working on the body mechanics task and intend to practise with these rigs and improve on my skills further, moving forward.

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As with all animation processes, we run into some issue at some point. This task was no exception.

Changes to the Animation:
Originally, I envisioned the 'Wife' To walk into the scene from off camera, and into the shot view to stop and look at her husband struggling, as seen in the reference footage. After some feedback, this idea was not working, resulting in changing the starting poses, and the timing of the bony/Wife. The offsetting of frames for the reference footage helped immensely with this. Due to this change being on a whim, I used real time reference of myself, using a large mirror, for the Wife's starting pose and movement during her time stood still. This change ended up working out for the better, as I felt it gave more context to the scene, as well as making sure the characters are well balanced in their poses and transitional poses.
From frame 80 to 85, Beefy originally did not look like he was attempting to lift the box, he looked like he just places his hands on it, and took them off again not a second later. With feedback in mind, I attempted to extend that section of keyed frames just a little bit longer. In tandem with this, I re-addressed the first half of the reference footage and took a risk in deleting all of the arm key frames for Beefy and starting again.
It got to a point during my editing of the animating phase, that the Rig's were starting to malfunction. Regardless of where I keyed the waist, Bony would whirl around on it's rotation axis, making a very confusing and humorous moment. It would happen on random parts of the rig, resulting in the feet sliding for reasons unknown. It was a quick choice or a torturous task of keying in all the frames, or using different tangents in the graph editor on certain keys to keep the feet in place for example. The tangent changes in the graph editor helped with this issue.
Spending some time to resolve this issue of the rigs, I chose to reduce the amount of keyed frames, as I thought that might have been part of the issue.

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Due to the reference footage being way too long at the start of animating the main task, I decided to use the first half of the reference video for the Beefy Rig/Husband Role. Taking advantage of the frame offset options in the image plane settings, the second half of the footage I needed for Bony/Wife, was moved to a place on the timeline that I thought was suitable enough. This, I thought, helped the point to come across of the gag towards the end, and the situation of what is happening in the scene. Doing this helped keep the animation clip to just under 10 seconds and not too drawn out.

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Body mechanics Main Task Reference Footage

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Body mechanics Main Task Reference Footage

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Thank you too my Husband who was my star of the show for this reference footage. He plays both Beefy and Bony's roles. The box is not heavy at all in reality, and I felt the footage showed the miming of a heavy box well enough to use.

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For our final Body mechanics task, we were asked to chose one of four options to animate for a 5-10 second clip. I chose to animate a lift with two characters that had opposite body shapes, yet had the unexpected and opposite "strength" when trying to lift up a moving box.
I started my planning with some sketches of how I envisioned the animation to go. These sketches can be seen in the video post titled "Body Mechanics Main Task Animatic".
Using my sketches as a base reference, I decided to use the Ultimate beefy and Bony Rigs from the start of my idea. In turn, I gave them character roles. For example: Beefy Rig is the huge, beefed up husband (that doesn't lift weights, he's just big) that thinks he can lift a moving box no problem. Turns out, he cannot! mean while, as he impatient Wife looks on as his attempt, she then gracefully picks up the box with ease, in the most gentle and feminine way. Husband stands in disbelief.

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For this weeks task, we were asked to spend 2 hours animating something with "golden poses". I chose to use reference footage of someone diving into a pool, and not very gracefully may I add. if given more time, I would like to revisit this animation and use more animation principles to give the character more life, with a cartoony feel instead of being rather stiff and not emphasising on the weight to gain momentum to show him jumping with anticipation and squash and stretch on the diving board. Unfortunately, I can not find the original source for the reference footage. It was from Youtube. To create my scene props, I used modelling shapes and flat planes with an ocean texture to create a swimming pool stand-in.

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For our weekly practical tasks, during week 3 we were asked to animate the lower half of the walk cycle. This task was well need for me as I was feeling rusty and a bit out of touch with walk cycles. I think it's okay, however still needs a lot of work. Going from memory and looking back into my Animators Survival Kit, I used the 2 hours we had to do the best I could for a basic walk cycle. I would do well to keep practising walk cycles as they are an important part of most animation productions and characters. The walking ball is always a good place to start as you are not distracted by the upper half of the body.

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For the weekly padlet task, we talked about cartoon spacing, taking the principles of 2D animation and applying it to 3D. We were asked to experiment with cartoon spacing on a set of 3D balls that represent the character flying straight forward and hitting a wall head on from a side view angle. Using the techniques of timing and spacing to switch up the ball animation, I gained the knowledge that; each ball felt and looked different in regard to how I used timing, anticipation, squash and stretch. Even though we are only using 6 key frames, in tandem with my edits, some balls looked like the were moving faster or slower, some had more weight and drag than others. I will use the tecniques I have learned from this exercise and apply them to any future animations where I want to push the animation for a cartoony feel, and appeal for the audience.

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Planning with a Bouncing Ball - Padlet Task 3 

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Planning with a Bouncing Ball - Padlet Task 3 

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For this weeks padlet task, we are asked to use a bouncing ball as a reference stand-in for a character. Using the short clip from Disney Animation Studio's Tangled(2010) as a base guide, I used the principles of timing, spacing and squash and stretch, as well as anticipation. This gave my ball, not just life, but also guided the audience through it's journey across the scene. Instead of a human character, I animated the ball as if it were it's own character, as a ball. I think using a simple object, such as a ball, is an excellent way to plan out a scene, especially if you need to show an example to a client, tutor etc, swiftly and with ease.

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Balance Beam - task 2 Continued...Pose 3

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Balance Beam - task 2 Continued...Pose 3

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For the 3rd and final pose, I chose to use a classic tightrope walker image as reference. Again, as a base reference. This time, I had a live model pretend to walk across a tightrope, as I could not find a clear enough image of a walker with no balancing pole in their hands.

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For our first weekly task, we were asked to animate a bouncing ball jumping across a gap, however the ball should have some sort of personality to it rather than just being a lifeless ball, bouncing across.
For my bouncing ball, I wanted this little guy to feel like he was building up courage and momentum to jump across. We were only given 2 hours to complete as much as we could for this task. I feel that my animation meets the requirements of the task, but could use some extra work and more animation principles applied to the character. In my spare time in the future, I will revisit this animation to complete it to a satisfactory standard to use for a showreel.

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Balance Beam - Task 2 Continued...Pose 2

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Balance Beam - Task 2 Continued...Pose 2

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For the second pose, I used this image of a gymnasts transitional pose. Again, using the image as a rough base to work from and not copying it exactly.

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Balance Beam - Task 2 Continued...Pose 1

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Balance Beam - Task 2 Continued...Pose 1

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For the first pose, I used this image of a gymnast in a finishing pose. I didn't copy the reference image exactly, because I wanted to experiment with an exaggerated pose.

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For our second task, we were asked to set up 3 different poses. Each one should show an example of a bipedal humanoid character using different methods to balance on a beam.

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Introduced 1981 by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas whilst examining Disney’s productions since 1930s. Breaking down each element of successful animation techniques

01.    Squash and Stretch

This technique was primarily used to exaggerate weight, gravity, impact etc. The technique relies on your understanding of weight distribution when manipulating the object or character during its transition or transformation.

02.   Anticipation

Anticipation is used in animation to prepare the audience for an object or character to perform an action or task. Such as before kicking a ball, you would expect to see a range a movement before the foot connects.

03.   Staging

Staging is about viewer engagement through audience viewing perspective or movement. Ensuring the audience’s focus is always kept on what is relevant and tuning out what is not. This can be seen in a similar way to photography, with the use of focus to draw the attention appropriately.

04.   Straight ahead action and pose to pose
The technique refers to the two different ways to animate an objects or character’s transition. Pose to pose focuses on mapping the starting pose, end pose, and a couple of key poses in between. Then the animator fills in the gaps between poses. On the other side, straight ahead action simply works through each frame from start to finish. Often these techniques are combined depending on what kind of feel the animator is going for in the scene.

05.   Follow through and overlapping action
Follow through is the visual representation of momentum and how it shows energy and trajectory in an object. Overlapping action is the use of secondary and tertiary animations such as when a character is swimming their arms and legs will be overlapping actions versus their head animation.

06.   Slow in and slow out
This is the method of adding more frames at the start and finish of the animation, giving a flow of motion throughout that starts with a build up and fades out.

07.   Arc
Using the Arc technique is simply allowing physics to exist when handling an object that is thrown in a direction in your animation. The principle behind it is to ensure the object’s path is one the audience can believe.

08.   Secondary action
The use of an animation to emphasise the main animation. This can be seen with moments like when a cat knocks over a vase on a shelf as it struts by. The cat would be the primary animation, the vase would be secondary.

09.   Timing
This is more of a concept of audience engagement. If you define objects behave a certain way you either need to be consistent or reflect what is known in the real world. If we use the real world as a definition, objects that have heavy mass will be slower to start pushing, pick up momentum as they are moved with enough force, then fade out as it comes to a stop.

10.   Exaggeration
As with anything that is exaggerated, to do so in animation is to push the boundaries of perceived reality and limitations. Commonly seen in something like Spiderman, with all of his poses something you would see a gymnastics professional doing, all while fighting bad guys.

11.   Solid drawing
The concept behind solid drawing is simply to be able to construct a world in 3D and keep it consistent. Like defining an adventure animation in space with a set structure to the space craft interior and weight of actions with reduced gravity.

12.   Appeal
The final value for animation is around audience engagement, from the initial marketing to the full production, there needs to be something about your animation that makes it easy to like but also have its own characteristics. There is no set way to achieve this and steps more into the realms of screenwriting.