Original subtitles

In this video, we will start blocking a new animation.

This is going to be an idle animation of the squirrel.

But we need our character to transition

from the run cycle into a stop,

do the idle, and then get back into the run cycle.

At least to make our character

checking the surrounding environment.

And then as it hears some noise

maybe it will go back into the run cycle to flee the danger.

It is going to be a very fun idle to animate

and the first step is always to check out references.

Looking for some specific information.

First one is the rhythm of the character.

You can see how we jumped from a pose to another

in a very fast motion and sometimes just stop.

And then it almost stay still.

Those various snappy motion really brings

the fact that our character is lightweight.

Squirrels use their tails also to communicate their feelings

and to communicate between them.

So we can use the tail to communicate surprise or fear,

to our character.

The last thing that really shines through those reference

is the briefing pattern of the character.

It is really fast paced and he does show a lot

when the character is not moving that much.

We'll be blocking five poses.

The first one where our characters stop

and look at the side.

Then it will raise on its back leg and maybe smell the air.

We will then pull his attention to the other side.

Then he will turn his head in a more grounding pose

because he heard something, transition into a pose

where he will start running to flee the danger.

Since we are going to transition from the run cycle

the first thing I will do is clean the run cycle.

So I will select older curve and press the Shift+E

and clear the cyclic modifier.

Then I will select the root bone and I will press Shift+E

and get clear of the linear extrapolation

by choosing constant extrapolation.

Make sure you have all your keys selected

when removing your modifiers

or your character will be kind of behaving weirdly.

At least it looks pretty fun

but it will be hard to work with that.

So once I'm done, I will duplicate my run cycle.

So that I have a new action to work with

that I will call idle.

And I will keep the run cycle animation

at the beginning of this new animation.

This will help us creating the transition

between the idle animation and the run cycle.

We'll have to animate our character transitioning

from the run cycle to the idle.

But as we did for any of our animation so far,

I will go on frame 15 and I will stop blocking

the first pose of our idle.

The first thing I do is to flatten the feet of the character

because they're on the ground and since you will have

some kind of still pose we need him to be grounded.

And to make our life a little easier

I will keep the back feet on the ground.

In the same position they had

when he land at the end of the run cycle.

You can do the pose you want, but, I believe

it will be better for you to follow what I'm doing

so that you won't be lost

if you're not use to animate that much.

As I block the character pose I will give you

the key component I'm looking for when doing so.

I don't want my character to stay on his four leg

in the straight pose.

If you raise the one of your leg you will automatically

shift your weight towards the other one.

This way you will keep balance.

And we can clearly see that on the reference poses.

Our character has turned to its right side.

His whole chest is slightly shifting

to be right under his front leg.

This way his center of mass is aligned with the front leg

is aligned with these contact points.

If we were to see our character from beneath,

we can see that the three contact points

the three legs contacting the ground are shaping a triangle.

And the center of mass of our character

is more or less centered with this triangle.

This way our characters looks balanced.

And this is a very important thing

when you are doing these kind of idle poses.

Since there is no more inertia like motion forward

as in the run cycle, you need to make your character

look in balance on each pose.

The other very important thing to do is to twist

the character to while the contact point.

Looking at the reference again we can see that the shoulder

are pointing down towards the contact point.

And as in most cases you want to create an opposite twist

with the hips.

The cool trick to remember is to create a V shape,

with the line of the shoulder and the line of the hips.

We then try to give a nice curved shape to the tail.

And when I feel like the pose is looking all right,

I will use the tweak controllers

to fix the shape of the front leg.

On the current pose, the front leg contacting the ground

is bending forward and it looks a bit weird.

So I'm using this tweaker controller to fix it.

Checking the rotation first

and then just moving the joint a bit backward.

As we did before, during this blocking stage

I'm absolutely not considering the timing of the animation.

I'm just setting the key poses

or golden poses every five frame.

I've seen people setting those key poses, every one frame

and then moving them when they knew their first timing path.

For the next two poses,

I want my character to kind of relax and sit.

On the first pose our character is transitioning

from the previous pose watching to his right.

And then I want him to watch to his left

so that we have a cool rotation and the change in the pose.

So, as usual, try to avoid the twinning in your poses.

Think of the silhouette of your character.

Does it read well?

And think of the balance of your character

and his emotional state.

Is he relaxed, curious, in danger, stressed?

As I'm building the very first sitting pose,

I will kind of squash a bit the character backward.

So I'm watching references from the video

I've linked in the documentation, to check the curvature

of the body of the character, for example.

So I'm using both rotation

and location of the different controller.

Don't hesitate to move the controllers.

A lot of people, especially beginners, tend to use

only rotation, especially for the spine bone

or the arm bone when using forward kinematic.

And a lot of rig doesn't allow to move the joint,

using the location channels.

While this behavior can be physically correct

because you can't really move your bone

you can only rotate them,

animation wise it's not necessarily relevant.

Because unless you have a rig that perfectly simulate

the physical behavior of your character,

with the bones, the fat and everything,

you may not get an interesting shape

or a believable shape of the body of your character

by only rotating the controllers.

Especially with this kind of fluffy character.

Because you're not currently animating it's skeleton

you're animating everything from the skeleton,

the muscles and the bones and the fur.

So as usual, think of the shape of your character,

think of its silhouette,

and think of what you want to communicate.

Here, I want him to be chilling on its back leg.

So I'm compressing him a bit.

A reminder, don't forget to set your keys

to constant interpolation,

and don't forget to key your whole character

to avoid foot sliding and all this kind of shenanigans.

For the third pose, I want my character to be

kind of curious to what's happening in his environment.

So I will turn him the other side so that we have contrast

between the previous pose and the current one.

One of the key component of this next pose is curiosity.

I want the character to be smelling the air around him,

as if something was catching his attention.

This is why I will give to his body a more extended pose.

He's pulling his head apart to smell the air.

His body is kind of stretched or pulled by his curiosity.

And since the pose is slightly bending forward,

I've laid the tail backward

so that the character is balanced.

There is more weight of his head forward and the tail

is counterbalancing the weight of the head backward.

From my experience an unbalanced pose

doesn't look right at all.

So, before being appealing,

I feel like a pose must be balanced.

Like, we can feel that the character is well grounded

and it won't be falling down.

So when creating your pose, think first of the goal

of your character, the purpose of the pose, his feeling.

Then, think of the appeal of the pose,

the silhouette, et cetera.

And for any still pose or pose with very slight motion

where there is not that much inertia,

always think to balance your character.

As I'm getting close to the pose I want,

I can't think to fix the secondary shape

like the elbow orientation, the knee orientation

and all this kind of stuff.

From there I've made a personal choice.

I'm not sure that squirrel can really rotate their ears.

Watching the reference, it seems that

there is a slight rotation of the ears.

And watching other video I can see a bit of rotation,

but I'm not sure how much they can rotate their ears.

But the ears are a fantastic feature to communicate emotion,

to communicate curiosity.

Think of the motion of a cat's ears

when they've heard a noise

their ear rotates almost 180 degrees.

They can show also fear, aggressivity, et cetera.

So I'm perfectly fine if this motion is wrong

because I'm not here to reproduce a realistic motion.

I'm here to give life to this character through emotions.

I feel like, the pose look believable enough.

Here I'm starting to work on the next pose

and at first I also made a pose

where the character was staying on his back legs.

But it was way too similar to the current pose,

so in the end, I've modified this pose.

I wanted the character to feel surprised

by some kind of noise or whatever,

and scared at the same time.

We will jump directly to the next pose

and then we will see how I reworked the current one.

Since the next pose is the last one

before our character run again, I have duplicated

all the key frame of the run cycle and them onto frame 35.

I will also duplicate the last route motion key

and put it on the first one of the second cycle.

This way I don't get root motion on the second cycle.

We will get rid of the root motion in the end,

but it's important to have it, for the transition

between the run cycle and the first pose of the idle.

Here, I'm creating the anticipation pose.

The next video will be a more in depth explanation

of anticipation, but basically it's the moment

where the character is compressing himself

to gather energy before jumping forward into the run cycle.

So I flatten the foot on the ground

so that he's very stable.

I'm pushing the chest backward and the hips forward

to compress the torso as much as possible.

And I'm also pushing the head inward.

It's like squashing a spring

before releasing to make it jump.

I'm shaping the tail into a knock because I know

that when he will be jumping he will whip the tail downward.

So I'm kind of shaping the body

the opposite way it will react on the next pose.

I'm compressing it a lot

while it will be stretched When the character is jumping.

As explained before I'm revising the previous pose

before the anticipation because I wasn't happy

with him staying on his back legs while I wanted him to be

kind of scared by some noise, or something,

just before he decide to run away.

So I want the squirrel to be well-grounded on his four legs.

Slightly closer to the ground ready to jump

and with the ears, head and torso pointing toward the noise.

The tail is counterbalancing the pose

creating a nice curve of the whole body.

Again, I'm making sure that the character is well-balanced

that's why I moving the right front leg a bit on the side.

As explained before, as any art form

don't hesitate to try to improve your animation.

Revise them, change your mind, et cetera.

If you are not convinced about what you are doing,

then change it.

If you don't feel like you're communicating anything,

change it.

If it's boring, change it.

But if you can't figure why,

don't hesitate to ask anybody around you.

One of the cool thing about animation is that

most of the people connect with animation.

And while your mother might not be able

to tell you what you have to do to improve your animation,

she might point out things that looks weird to her.

Or what she doesn't like about your animation.

And then you can make the choice to modify it,

or it can put you on the way to improve the animation.

And if you know any professional animator

that can give you feedback, don't hesitate.

Or put your animation on forums, that's very important.