Knight Spider Animation Challenge - Play by Play

Knight Spider - Rough 2D Pass

I find it really helpful before heading into Maya, to spend time working out the idea in a quick 2D pass. It's a great way to explore the timing and spacing, and to see if your story comes across. This was drawn and created in the Rough Animator app. It took about two hours todo.

Knight Spider - Ball Pass

Next up after the 2D pass, is to translate it into 3D in Maya. Before dealing with the full rig, I spend time using a custom ball rig to work on the timing, spacing, squash, stretch, etc. This helps with two areas, firstly working out the 3D translations and rotations; then once that is done, I can copy the ball rig animation to the COG on the main rig. Which will give me a head start on my blocking pass next.

Knight Spider - First Blocking Pass

With the ball pass done, I moved onto the blocking pass. Here I worked through all the key poses, inbetweens, antics, and extremes. Using the timing worked out with the ball pass, I can now see the overall animation and the idea coming to life. This stage is great because it also allows me to see any issues I need to address.

Knight Spider - Spline Pass

Next up is the spline pass, something which I used to dread, coming from blocking. Recently I started blocking in spline, so this stage of blocking to spline is far less destructive, and my peace of mind is better. For the spline stage, I wanted to concentrate on adding and refining the various constraints, the animation for his nightcap, and making sure all the weight, momentum, and overlap from the blocking is coming across as planned.

Knight Spider - Refined/Polish Pass (entry submission)

After the spline pass, it is on to the refined and polishing stage. For this pass I wanted to concentrate on polishing the arcs, adding in the facial animation, and refining hand poses. This pass was also about adding in and refining the web animations and adding the bedroom set dressing.