Been busy with work with deadlines.
Came back to this to start making a bit more progress on it since its been gathering dust
still pretty rough stages
havent done much with the hands or arms properly yet, tackling that today in areas that are not feeling connected.
Need to model a watch for him.

Will post more later on as it progress further since this is pretty early in wip of getting things to work.
Just animated small parts tonight, and will be moving into focusing more on getting everything else animated to finish the idea before layering and splining properly. Still pretty rough

Added more breakdowns but wanted to see how it looked going from the rough breakdowns - Spline without any refinement.
Theres a lot to do, especially since the end doesnt have breakdowns currently (where things start feeling more pose-posey)
Lot to do, things to change, but I take small wins :)

I always hate animating a slight speed - stop lol, requires me to pay attention to the graph editor on the pelvis
But worked on this for a little bit today, Mainly need to create a watch model now for him to look at.
Pretty rough, but main goal was getting the right placements and most deceleration

Thought id show how the rough blocking to rough spline looks like when I simply just auto tangent it at its current rough position.
Ignore the ending pose currently as thats due to change on the Screen Right arm to be a bit more clean looking,currently its in a pretty rough area and working on it :)

Really Rough part I added this evening.
I dont get a lot of time to animate in the evenings, so I do what I can and just rough things out really quickly so I dont forget about them the next day. So while there will be a lot to iron out, it gives me a good base for when I start working properly :)

Something extremely rough in a rough blocking pass.
I tend to go through these to get a feel of arcs and ideas, before layering. Even if it has tons of info, it just gives me a solid idea of "Yeah I like this kind of idea" and allows me to continue. I just enjoy doing things to get ideas down :)

Animating a windmill arm motion while making sure the arms are readable will always throw me off, it also teaches me to not always cheat and sometimes you have to say fuck it and go straight ahead and feel the process.
Ive just gotten in some rough poses quickly to get the overall jist of it

Its okay to have different forms of pre-planning.
Here im exploring different choices to describe my idea.
Its really simple, and poses changes, you can see half way through on the stretch-falling back, I changed the pose after, but I make note of it. You dont need good drawings, just intent of idea

I always love leaving myself notes in blender so i know what im doing
Currently in the midst of finishing this rough layout pass for myself and I find it helpful to understand the kind of spacing im looking for when trying to come up with how to get from A-B at times very quickly.

Pre-Reference Section - Layout Idea.

I use a cube pass with rough stickman ideas/following a rhythm pass I did using rough stop motion poses.
The idea is to see if I can get the flow between the different beats and get the change of contrast into the characters. It helps give me a better idea.

Pre-planning.
Before i animate, storyboard etc, I create small documents on what I want to show from the character rig.
What is their motivation? Even in small body mechanics tests, there is a want or need.
What is the character like? what are their energy levels like?
Think what you want to show.

Posing Is always super important, even for walk cycles. You can change a few things and change the attitude of a pose just by making a few changes from a vanilla pose.
Always good to not always make things feel Vanilla once you're comfortable with it :)
(Still hate walk cycles)

When creating poses to find a character I want. I think of several things.
Energy Level: is it low, med, high etc.
Emotional state: Happy, Calm, Skeptical
Power center: Low, High, Inner, Outer etc.
What is their want or need in the situation? What is it that shows what the character wants TO DO