Heavy character Animation - Part 1

Hello all, once again I'm back here to talk about the next animation which I will be working on over the next couple of weeks. I had at the time wanted to produce more creature animation but, I feel that there is a particular area which I lack and have not developed my skills enough yet and therefore, I have decided to work on it.



Valve- Team Fortress 2



This time I will be animating a character from Valve's Team Fortress game, the "Heavy" character. I had other rigs that was available for me to pick at the time but they're a couple of reasons of why I have chose this rig. For one thing, I wanted to test a different rig that I wasn't used to. Secondly, the fact that this asset is from a game, so I wanted to try and add some gaming animation towards my showreel which was suggested by Alex Williams at the workshop that I had attended a while back. Another reason I have chose this is that, I wasn't proud of myself, where I had cheated some of the poses because of the camera angle that I had chosen; this time however, I will continue to stage my scene with one camera, in addition I will put multiple cameras around my scene, so every detail like weight and balance are there. Lastly, I wanted to have a prop animation where the character has something, inevitably, this would mean that I would get the chance to work with the IK and Fk Switch, something which I need to get past.



I also chose the Heavy character as I wanted to have an update from my mentor lessons animation assignment, which only had a basic ball as the body and two legs. This time, I would have to work on a whole body which I'm excited to work on.

This isn't the first time that I have animated a character holding an object but, I think because of past experience on that and another animation project which I had to shelve as it was so badly worked one, really is making me fear for the worse when I begin working on this project. But, somehow I have to look past that and make myself believe that this is another challenge which I must overcome.

The Heavy Rig





Poses are not right- testing constraints

Need to go over the tutorials to how to properly constrain the character with the object (gun).

I have therefore decided to look at Digital tutors again, as I wanted to make sure that I animate this correctly. So after, signing up for another month worth of content, I started to note down a few tips that would help me with this animation.





Digital Tutors

 

It's been a slow start and I'm already not happy with the amount of work that I was able to achieve, no matter, a new day tomorrow. Also to add on just before I go, I was able to amend the frame rate issue that I had with my Dog animation personality.