Animation Mentor Assignment Five, Six, and Seven!

The past two weeks I've been working on the same Animation assignment. For this assignment we had the option to use one of three different rigs. Of course, me being the overachiever that I am, I chose the most difficult of the three rigs. The assignment was to focus on anticipation, overlapping action, and squash and stretch. All three of the rigs were essentially different variations of a squirrel. Because of the amount of work this animation required, this assignment was our first multi-week assignment. Like all of my other Animations, the first step was to plan it out. I had a rough idea of what I wanted to do in my head, so the next step was to sketch it out.

As you can see from my sketches, I wanted the character to bounce off of a branch like a diving board, do a flip, and bounce on the ground. I also sketched out some of the shapes that I wanted to achieve in the tail. This assignment was definitely difficult, but once again with the help of my peer buddy Lorenzo, I was able to figure out what issues I had with my animation and fix them. So without further ado, here's the final animation.

In the end I was quite happy with how this turned out, considering how crazy I felt working on that tail! Seriously, that was one hell of a challenge. Ray liked the work I did, specifically the weight my character possessed. His only comment was to adjust the tail a little bit so that it's overlap looked better.

Thanks for reading, and as always, enjoy!

~Josh