Original subtitles

- [Teacher] In this video,

we will start to blocking our animation

using the extreme poses.

We have a spot and define on the reference.

As we did when we were animating the squirrel character,

I will create those key poses every five frames.

So for the time being, we don't care about timing at all.

And to make sure that I have no sliding controllers,

I will insert the key frame on all controllers

for both the character and the punching bag.

Since our character will be doing a lot of footwork,

and that generally the knees align with the foot

in the rig properties,

I will make sure that the leg parent is set to one.

Meaning that the pole target is now following the foot.

And as we rotate the feet, the knee will follow.

So let's now build our first pose;

the idle pose.

The right leg or back leg is open to the outside,

meaning that the foot is rotated to the right.

The weight of the character is supporting

mostly by this leg.

So I'm pushing the center of gravity backward

and onto the right leg.

If we watch the reference and look at the line affection,

we can see that the whole body

is slightly leaning forward,

creating a nice C curve forward

from the supporting foot to the head.

Generally the front leg or left leg

is not supporting that much weight.

and the character is supposed to be

on the tip of his toes.

You will often see muay Thai fighter

making slight bounce with the front leg.

It's a way to input rhythm into the fight

and they keep their front leg ready

to block any kick using their left shin.

When posing the arms,

don't forget that you can't rotate your elbow

in any other axis then the Z-axis

and that the arm bone can't rotate upward

than the line made by the shoulders.

So it's super important to currently pose the shoulders.

I see too many beginners

not playing with the shoulder controller

while they are very important

and critically influence the silhouette of your character.

Now ask yourself, why on the reference,

the character have the shoulders so high?

We are not here to only answers mechanical properties

of the body, but also the purpose of the pose.

Again, as explained in the previous chapter,

if you give a clear goal to the current pose,

it will communicate the will of the character.

And as soon as you do that,

you're giving life to your character.

In muay Thai and in boxing in general,

shoulder are raised a lot to protect the head

of the character, especially the chin,

because a shot in the chin can knock you out instantly.

If you were to animate some beginner in boxing,

maybe you should drop the shoulders

so that you communicate a big mistake boxing wise.

Here I want my character to show mastery

in the art of boxing.

So I will try to mimic the reference pose

and even push it more;

pushing the head deep into the shoulders.

As usual, the step between a good pose and a great pose

is pretty long and it's about a lot of tweaking.

But why it might be more natural to have open hands

whenever you're not wearing gloves?

Especially in muay Thai,

where you can catch your opponent

and go into the clinch,

I've decided to close the left hand

because both my hand were posed a bit the same way,

and I had some twinning in the post

and it didn't look that interesting.

So I will close the fist and I will slide the scale,

the palm fingers on the local X axis

to make them slightly larger

as if the fist was a bit squashed

by the pressure of the closing hand.

Don't forget that you can refer back to the video

about posing the hands.

Don't forget to pose the neck and the head,

but don't over-rotate those controllers.

And as a final touch, you can use the face controller

to shape a bit the eyes.

Now our character is ready to kick some ass.

So don't forget to rotate a lot around your character

to check if the center of gravity

is properly aligned and your character, balanced.

And don't forget to check the overall silhouette

of the character of from different angles.

Again, remember that you can refer to the

previous chapter to double-check the method

to get a good pose.

Before you start posing the jab pose,

double check the video reference.

You can see that both feet are moving forward

during this punch.

Beyond rotating the feet, don't forget

to change their rotation while posing the jab.

So the first thing I will do is to move the feet forward.

Now, as we watch carefully the reference,

we can see that the weight is shifting onto the front feet

and the whole chest is twisting to the right.

And so does the feet.

So, since we have weight on the front foot,

I will flatten it a bit,

and then I will raise the back foot

using the heel controller.

And then we would rotate both feet to the right.

But when you punch left, your feet turns to the right.

When you punch with the right, your feet turn to the left.

But I haven't pushed this pose too much

because the next punch will also be

a straight punch forward.

And if we go too much forward

and too much into a horizontal pose

for this initial punch, we will lose the contrast

with the next one.

And so our pose may look good,

but the animation won't because it will lack of contrast

between the first pose and the second pose.

Another thing I'm doing though,

is that I'm slightly spreading the arms of the character.

While it might not be a super good idea

whenever you are boxing,

because you are exposing your chin,

this improve a bit, the readability of the pose

and it slightly extend the overall silhouette

of the character when we follow the shoulders.

Finally, don't forget that you also have to pose

the punching bag.

Don't push it too far and don't use that much controller.

Moving all the controllers won't necessarily

give you better result.

While we do agree that everything is connected

so everything should be moving; keep it simple.

Your audience will mainly focus on the character.

So you want to avoid any glitches

on the bag by moving too much controller

at the same time.

Once done, don't forget to key all your controllers

and don't forget to add subtle

rotation details to the feet.

When we watch the reference,

we can see that there is a subtle tilting during the punch.

Don't forget to add it during the blocking state.