"For Luna" Film WIP: update V

Finally will be moving on.

I did my best with this shot. And it's crazy to think I've been doing work on this shot since January. I've redone it so many times and took it into 2D to figure it all out.

I feel that this final version is the best it has been. However, it's hard to part with this when I know it's still not perfect and still not even reel-worthy... But you live and learn.

Rig hiccups and technicalities aside, I know that as the animator, I still could have pushed things more and cleaned up some timing and spliney moments.

This shot was worked on long past when I should have stopped, but I continued to "polish" because of our stall in production. And I honestly could have and would have stopped at the "spline" stage I have in the shot breakdown. But because I was given extra time to make it a little better, I took it.

We still aren't rendering yet, but I needed to cache this out no later than this weekend.

I just want to take what I learned from this arduous experience and move forward and make new and better animation. I may lay off the quadruped animation for a bit and then when I do look at it again I'll do something much simpler like a walk cycle or even just posing. I know creature animation is important, which is why I feel even more disappointed that I couldn't get this shot looking great.

After my placement in Animation Mentor and taking the time to look at professional reels and really comparing myself and giving myself an honest understanding of where my skill level is at, I've been dialing it back a bit. I'm trying a new habit of working on a walk cycle every single day just to get it nailed down. No matter how bad it looks, I'm going to keep moving forward and restarting and fixing what I need to.

I still plan to work on my personal dialogue shot and taking my time with it. But in the mean time I just really want to focus in on those principles so that I may finally feel confident in my understanding and establish a more solid workflow. I'm also going into the sketchbook and drawing poses, not only from real life, but also from animated films.

This film has definitely been my biggest challenge of my college career, but I know that it's been most rewarding in all that it has taught me.