Balance Beam animation

I gave myself the challenge of doing a longer movement, particularly, one with flow and rhythm. I spent a few days watching videos of not only balance beam performances but other forms of gymnastics. I mashed together a few movements I thought would challenge me enough and also that I just thought were pretty. I'm not the biggest Marvel fan but I always love edgy loner characters such as Gwen - but what I also love so much about her is that she is undeniably slick, agile and elegant. So it made sense in my head to kind of, put this rig and that type of movement together.

Once I jammed lots of cuts of gymnastic movements together in After Effects, I got straight onto blocking. I already had in my head that I was going to be a little crammed for time simply because I wanted to give myself time at the end to give it a real good polishing. Finger movements etc were crucial in this!

Once everything was blocked and I felt like this would work for me, I saw what my first big challenge was going to be. IK/FK switch. Oh god. Of course my wonderful tutor reassured me it's totally simple and I could do it. Let's just say I learnt a lot.

A lot of the beautiful movement I was referencing was (although very graceful) also very stiff. Of course, because real gymnasts are tense and bracing their whole body as they're performing. In this case it would look better on the model for her to be slightly more supple, free-flowing as she is a super hero. In my head, I imagined Gwen to be doing this movement on steel beams, dancing in the big city's beauty. Her natural habitat. I had some great feedback from my tutor suggesting I push and add lot of movement to do this. This added a lot of that 'dance-y' feeling, as if the movement flows directly from her centre, outwards.

Some things I would have liked to improve on would definitely be learning how to move her torso better as she is upside down. I often used Animbot's useful tool of temporarily moving the pivot point of controllers around - however I feel I could have done a better job at this. This would have definitely elevated the animation to potentially solidify that transfer of weight from the legs to the arms.

Although I initially dreaded it - I really enjoyed animating the fingers throughout this animation. I felt that they were a huge asset to making all of this feel flow-y. I think these little movements were the icing on the cakes. I do feel like I've learnt a lot about those little details in this particular challenge. I got in the swing of getting the bulk of the animation looking good a lot quicker than I expected from myself and, as planned, gave myself enough time to focus on the fingers, head tilts etc. I would love to do another dance move such as this again! 💃