One Barbarian vs Five Skeletons

The barbarian should fight his way through a skeleton army to the skeleton king. The first two skeletons are small and easy to kill, the second wave of skeletons is a bit tougher, but still no problem for the barbarian. At the end there comes the boss fight with the king of the skeletons, who is a bigger challenge for the barbarian. It was a very cool experience doing this animation because I had all the freedom to do whatever I wanted to do. I made a lot of references, which was a lot of fun. But I had to decide what I want to include and what is not possible in the given time. It was my first bigger animation with human rigs.

Some problems I had: It was challenging to handle many characters in one scene and use the camera in a different way, compared to frame just one character. I had to learn to look more on the render view than on the perspective view. It was hard to give the barbarian an authentic walk, because he has short legs and a heavy axe. The swings of the axe also turned out harder than I thought. The axe should feel heavy to handle, and in parallel the barbarian should be strong. This was a big conflict to combine both attributes in this animation. I had to edit some stuff on the skeletons, so the barbarian can cut them apart. The impact when the axe is colliding with the swords of the skeletons was hard to animate. I had to switch between IK and FK fluently in the movements several times in different situations.

I learned a lot about human body mechanics in this project. You are always learning! 

Rig by Troung CG Artist: https://gumroad.com/truongcgartist