Original subtitles

- [Instructor] Now that the torso root of our character

and the feet are polished,

we can start polishing the whole chain of the torso,

the hips, the chest, neck and head.

As usual, I will start with the hips rotation.

And as explained in the previous animation chunk,

I'm mainly following the motion of the feet

to figure out the rotation of the hips.

Also since we add a very detailed blocking,

generally the stage is pretty fast

as we mostly have to smooth out the motion of the hips

based on what is already blocked.

For example, here I'm slightly reducing

the tilting of the hips

so that they are more facing the character

and facing the orientation of the center of gravity,

because this is the transition motion

and our character is settling just after the hook.

Then I'm reworking the step back.

So I make sure that the character hips don't tilt too much

and it looks too feminine.

I'm also making sure that the hips twist

follow the right leg.

But remember that the hips are pulling the legs

that are not in contact with the ground

while the supporting leg are pushing on the hips.

This should gives you a broad idea

on how to tilt the hips.

The character is pushing for the jump,

I make sure that the bit is oriented backward.

The hips are oriented forward towards the groin

during the anticipation

and oriented backward toward the bit

during the pushing pose.

Then I will fix the overall orientation of the hips

during the jump as they look delayed here.

Whenever I'm working on the hips,

it's often a matter of feeling

whether the pose looks right or not,

that's pretty hard to explain.

Hopefully when you're watching this video,

you can see the improvement whenever I'm moving a key

over the different rotation axis.

One part that definitely needed some refinement

is the kicking part.

As I have initially blocked a very odd recoil of the hips

and it generates a very odd visual glitch.

You can see the difference of rotation

between frame 79 and frame 80.

There is a big jump in the value of the Z quaternion curve.

And so what I've decided is to average the value

over frame 80 and switch on frame 81.

Having this big change of value

over two frames instead of one

really improved the animation in the end.

From there, here you can see the hips

are really twisted backward,

pulling the left leg.

And then it was just about tweaking the existing curve

as we had no extreme motion,

making sure that the hips tilt up upon the supporting leg,

making sure that the twisting follows the foot

that was in error whenever the character is stepping back.

The chest was a little more interesting to work on.

Not that it is more important than the hips,

but visually it creates more variation

in the shape of the character.

And during this polishing stage,

I will be able to push even more

the pose of the anticipation of the kick

and the kick itself.

On the initial part of this chunk, just after the hook,

I'm tracking the axis from the base of the neck,

and I will mainly make the chest drag

based on the center of gravity motion.

So whenever the center of gravity is moving up,

I will slightly lean the character forward.

Whenever the center of gravity is twisting to the right,

I will slightly twist the chest to the left

so that there is a bit of delay in the chest motion

compared to the center of gravity and the leading hips.

Even when the character is initiating the jump,

we keep the same mechanism.

If the body is going up,

I will slightly lean the character forward.

But then when the character is airborne and about

to land just before throwing the kick,

the character starts to use his chest for the anticipation

to load energy.

So I will make sure that it twists as far as possible,

the opposite direction than the kick release,

as if the shoulder were going to pull the hips forward.

So from the camera view,

I just make sure that I push the line of faction

as far as possible,

tilting the chest to the right

and bending the character backward as far as possible.

Then the whole chest will be moving toward the kick

as if the character was trying to give a headbutt

to another bag that is side to side with the current bag.

So in the end, if you watch my current curve,

it's pretty noisy.

There is a lot of ups and downs.

And at the end of the polishing stage of this very part,

you will see that I have a way smoother curve.

And it does show in the arc of the base of the neck,

which is pretty nice.

Then I will break a bit the smoothness

of the X rotation curve around frame 82

to create the recoil effect after the kick.

But while the character was really leaning into the kick

now that he has lost momentum,

he needed to get straighter to find balance.

And once I've recovered this balance

during these short transitions between frame 82 and 85,

it's just about making the chest drag a bit

while the character is taking a few step backwards.

Then to improve the animation,

what I did is that I've modified the location of the chest

during the kick.

The idea was to create some chest shake

while the character was hitting the bag.

So I will be pushing the chest forward

just after the impact on frame 79

and a couple of frame later,

I will pull the chest backward

until it recovers around frame 85.

This will create a quick back and forth motion

as if the torso was shaking

because of the impact of the kick.

This is pretty similar to what we did to the shoulders

and the head of the character during the hook motion.

(swooshing)

Once I'm done with the chest,

I always go further in the chain.

So I will be working on the neck

as we did for the previous animation chunk.

As usual, I will be mostly making the head drag.

Since the neck is a tride of the chest,

quaternion rotation behavior

is pretty close to euler rotation behavior.

So from the side view,

I will be working on the X rotation channel.

I will make sure to track my axis

using the base of the neck.

And then when the character is going down,

I will slightly raise the neck.

And when the character is pushing up,

I will make sure that the neck is going down.

This is something we have already done

during the blocking stage.

So here I'm just revising some of the poses

that may not be clean.

Like this little drop on the y-axis that doesn't make sense

since the character is moving pretty linearly to the side.

Polishing the neck is mostly about

the X and Y rotation curve

as they drive the tilting and leaning of the head.

While my wheel is to make the head drag,

the polishing stage is also the opportunity

to fix some of the poses.

And my go-to for this is to watch my character

and make sure that the head doesn't feel too uncomfortable.

I'm just watching the relationship

between the chest and the neck.

And whenever the pose feels uncomfortable, I fix it.

(swooshing)

Regarding the head,

I haven't anything to add that we haven't covered already.

For all the transition between the punches,

the steps or any motion that is not that fast,

I will make the head slightly dragging as we did before.

I will jump directly to the kicking moment.

And at this stage of the animation,

my goal is not to make the head drag that much

because the character is focusing on the target,

and it might not be as relaxed

as in between the different punches.

Your goal here is to make sure that the character

is watching the target from the camera angle,

or at least that we feel like he's watching the target.

So, I'm orientating the head

so that it's looking at the same point

during the whole kick.

Once I'm done with the rotation,

I will play with the location of the head

to improve the impact of the kick.

First, I track the head tweaker on the top of the head.

And my goal is to clean the arc from the camera view,

for example, on frame 78,

you can see that the arc is going a bit down

and then going up.

So I will raise the head so that I get a cleaner arc,

and then after impact I will push the head forward.

And after I've pushed the head forward,

because of the momentum of the kicks that just stop

so the head is continuing to travel forward.

I will try to bunch a bit the different keys here,

this way just after the kick contact,

the head will stabilize a bit from the camera view

and we will be able to see it clearly.

And it will improve the recoil feeling of the kick.

Finally, I will add a bit of stretching in the head

when it's moving down super fast

using the top head tweaker,

only working on the Z location axis of the head tweaker.

And just after the stretch,

I will squash it a little bit

a couple of frames later

before it settles again two frames later.