While attempting to tie down the initial animation of the girl jumping onto the bridge, something felt wrong, and I just couldn’t figure out what. Eventually it occurred to me to think about motion arcs, and so I traced the major masses (hips and shoulders) and sure enough they were jiggling about like mad. But that led me to a more fundamental problem: the animation as I had it did not conserve momentum (linear or angular)! No wonder it looked wrong.
So I went back to revise the swing animation, animating only the hips and shoulders (and later, the head) and focusing in hard on timing, spacing, motion arcs and conservation of momentum. I couldn’t really make it fit the original timing and spacing, but I had an idea to add a bit of extra flair. Now she is going to catch the swinging boards themselves and go under them, then do a gymnastic flip before landing perpendicular to the boards. Definitely more complicated, but even at this early stage I can see how much better it’s going to feel.
The bridge will need to be totally reanimated to match this new motion, and make sure the bridge feels realistic forces from where the girl grabs it. The plan is now:
revise wires and boards to get them swinging weightily and lining up properly with this new animation
draw artist dummy type figures over the revised hips and shoulders (not box people, the days of box people are done)
continue to animate straight ahead to connect up with original rough animations, then resume tie-down as originally planned
This may seem like a setback, but it will look so much better, and it’s made me feel excited rather than demoralised, so... bear with this!
