Original subtitles

- [Instructor] We are slowly but surely making it

to the end of the polishing stage of our character

with the arm polishing.

At this stage of the course,

what I'm doing should not have any secret for you.

As usual, I will whether track the hand of the character

or the elbow of the character.

And as it's a forward kinematic chain,

I will start by polishing the shoulder,

the root of the forward kinematic chain.

And as we did before several time now,

I will make the shoulder drag,

especially on those movement

where the character is pretty relaxed.

What I mean here is that you have to spot

whether the shoulder are used

to drive the motion or not.

Whenever our character is walking or taking a few step back

and forward, he's not choosing the moment

of his arms to pull himself forward or back.

Generally speaking, the shoulder will always drag

compared to the chest.

But if you remember well, during the run cycle,

the shoulder were used

to pull the character up and forward.

So they were reaching their extreme

before the center of gravity of the character.

What I want to point out here

is that the shoulder will most of the time be dragging

but don't be too systematic with the way you deal

with the dragging because there are some case,

like the kicking of our character

where you want the shoulder

to reach their extreme a little earlier

as they will participate

in the momentum of the center of gravity,

and the current kick.

They are not leading for say,

but they are participating

to the leading force.

In the meantime, as you can see,

I've been tracking the elbow of my character

and I'm doing my best to get rid of any harsh angle drawn

by the elbow of the character

whether by using the graph editor

or by directly posing the character in the 3D viewport.

My workflow hasn't changed since the beginning

of this animation.

I'm focusing on the motion path,

rather than the graph editor.

My goal when the character is pulling the arm back

is to make the forearm

and the hand move a bit like a serpent,

while the elbow of the character

is the head of the serpent

and the fist is the tip of the tail.

This is the kind of motion that I love,

and I generally push them very far.

In this case, I've kept it pretty simple

and not too smooth as our character is contracted.

Once I got this chunk of the animation polished,

I've worked on the kicking move.

I've started by adding a little more bounce

into the shoulder

by dropping it whenever the character was jumping,

and then pushing it further up

whenever the character was going down.

And then during the kicking motion

and the hit, I've pushed the contrast of the curve.

Whenever the curve is going up,

I will push it a little further,

and whenever it's going down,

I will lower it a little more.

This will increase the swinging range of the whole arm,

and better communicates the power of the kick.

So you can clearly see me processing the z Euler rotation

on the shoulder that drives its swinging motion.

Then when the character was falling back

and stepping back into idle,

it was just a matter of making the shoulder drag.

So going a little up when the center of gravity's going down

and when the center of gravity is going up,

lower a bit the shoulder.

And once I'm done with the shoulder,

as usual, I will work with the arm controller.

As usual, I will start by calculating the motion path

of the elbow and then tweak the arm controller

during the swinging motion.

Generally speaking, on this part of the animation,

the motion of the elbow was a bit messy

and popping all around.

So my goal was pretty clear.

I wanted the elbow to rapidly reach its back position,

ease into the extreme, and then go back.

Once I have this space,

I jump into camera view

and I make sure that the arm is getting out

of the silhouette of the character.

It's not overlapping with the chest of the character.

So I can achieve this result

by slightly pushing the x rotation curve up.

From there, the fist is the part

that is going to show the most from the camera view.

So I will calculate the motion path

from the tip of the fist using the end tweak controller.

From there, we can see that from frame 80 to 82,

the arm is going forward way too fast.

I wanted it to ease backward

and now it's going forward as if it was bouncing

against a wall.

And on top of this, the motion path is drawing some kind

of V shape that doesn't look like a nice arc.

So by repositioning a bit the arm controller

and working a bit on the z rotation curve

on the forearm, I will be able to fix this.

So whenever I'm working on such a tight animation

or motion, meaning that it occurs upon a very few frame,

I adjusted the curve and often update the motion path.

And I'm not focusing on the character

but mostly on the arcs drawn by the tip of his fist.

In the end, I get a nice arc

with an ease-out forward.

So with experience, you will be better

at creating nice poses,

and then sculpting those animation arcs.

And this is fundamental to create a nice animation fast.

From there, I've been reworking the whole arm

during the steps back of the character.

But since this is something

we have seen multiple time before,

I won't be commenting it anymore.

Once the motion of the arm is polished,

you can work on your smears.

At this stage, what mostly matter

is what we are going to see in the camera view.

Even if I'm rotating around my character

to get a better angle to pose those tweak,

I always come back to the camera view

to double check the pose.

Your goal in this case

is to make sure that the current silhouette

of your character support the arcs.

When building those smears,

don't think of the arm as a current arm

but rather think of it as a whip

or a rubber limb.

Here I'm adding a little detail

by breaking the elbow joint

and slightly bending the arm backward

whenever it reaches its extreme back during the swing.

While having fun building those smears,

don't forget to track your arcs

because since you're modifying your tweaker bones,

their motion path will change.

So make sure that your spacing is still relevant.

Regarding the right arm polish,

there is not that much to say.

As usual, I will make the shoulder drag.

Then I will work on the arm controller,

making sure I have nice arcs from the elbows.

Then work on the forearm,

making sure that I have nice arcs to the wrist.

While you are mainly focusing on those arcs

in the spacing, don't forget

that if you can clear the silhouette of your character,

that's always better.

Like for example, avoiding the end

to overlap with the thigh

or make sure that your negative space allows you

to perfectly read the arm.

With all these little details taken care of,

I will call this animation done.

As any form of art, animation is never done

but you have to call your work finished and move on.

I personally do think that it's better

to get not too far into polishing

and finish your piece

than spending hundred of hours trying

to polish your animation,

getting disgusted or bored about it

and not publish it.

The best animation will sure bring attention on your work,

and in our world, it's better to get noticeable,

than the best.

So always try to push your animation

as far possible but make sure

that you finish what you have started.

And hopefully you will never be 100% satisfied

of what you have done.

So that there is always room for improvement

and that you will do better on the next animation.

So I would advise to set yourself some milestone

or deadlines, and this is exactly what I did

for this animation

where I need to publish the course

and I can't work forever on it.

So it's not as good as I would like

but I do believe it's good enough

to show my workflow,

and I'm really proud of this animation.

Even if I see some part that could be improved.

Finally, I'd like to add that animation is fun

and you should keep it fun.

Sometime it's painful because it's a lot of work

but if you take pleasure doing what you do,

you will progress very fast.

And if you have the chance

to make it your job, you will be among the few

that enjoy their jobs.

And this is sure a life changer

and the key to success.

So I wish you a lot of success

and I will see you in the next video.