Animation Update - 3D part 1

...Well I certainly took my time to update my blog during the animation process -.-;;;
Prepare for a massive update on the animation process OTL

We first started off by counting how many shots of Butter we had and decided to split half of the shots to Jerwin, and the other half for me to animate. I was given shots 4, 5, and 6 which included the lines:

"Hmph, well I AM the cream of the crop."
"S-Spread the love!"
"But you can't churn me down! I'm high end creamy blend!"

Before doing that however, we needed to check how Butter fit on the plate inside the fridge.

Butter seemed to fit fine, we would just have to adjust the lighting and camera angles
accordingly to each shot

After doing so, I began making rough animations for the shots. The first being the cream of the crop shot.

I wanted his head to tilt downwards at the beginning to emphasize his smirk. Afterwards, he would tilt his head up in a rather...."greasy" fashion. The timing would have to be altered to fit later also.

However, after checking with the head of 2D Jonathan, he gave me feedback that Butter lost his sturdiness as he "jiggled" around. Also, I was actually a bit late in giving this to him, as he had split the 2D animation between different members too. This meant that it was up to Jerwin and I to provide them with 3D animations quickly in order for them to work on them. I honestly wasn't too confident with my 3D skills initially, and I was actually finding it more difficult to animate Butter compared to a character with no limbs because of the fact that he had a solid form, and I also had to imagine how his body would move if he DID have limbs within the 3D aspect of the animation.

I referred back to the animatic Jonathan had provided, along with the expression sheets the members doing 2D animation had discussed to create a pose that would further fit the face that Jonathan had already started animating without a body. (Sorry Jonathan! T_T)

It still included the smirk and included a head tilt backwards which Butter would then whip his head forward with his changed extreme expression. This shot would've looked a lot better if I had included follow-through action for his head to maybe tilt back slightly again at the end to look more smooth and natural, as he looks quite stiff when he returns.

I thought this animation was capturing Butter's extreme personality quite well personally. However, I still hadn't learned the lesson of communicating with the 2D animators: I had made my animation different to what Jonathan had already drawn out.

On this day (3/06) there was a feedback session with other lecturers and we had to prepare an animatic for it. So I quickly remade a rough animation of this shot to fit Jonathan's animation.

After fixing the animation, it fit perfectly with his animation

This was the basic animation I quickly made for that shot. However, with the addition of the expressions and the quick zoom in, Jonathan and I thought that the shot looked perfect just as is. The emphasis is supposed to be on Butter's extreme expressions, so having too much body movement could distract the audience. Also, I later realised that the sudden head whip forward along with the fast zoom could be a bit of an over-emphasis which could overload the audience.