Ident 2 - Animation

And now onto Ident 2!

We join our hero standing by a lever! What will happen? Stay tuned to find out!

Once again, working on the small details of DiscoverBot tilting his head as he rubs his hands in preparation. Looks a lot nicer than just standing still and going to pull a lever...

It was then a case of leaning him forward and taking hold of the handle. Don't forget to add in a little step to bring him closer and allow him to 'ready himself'.

A quick tug... to no avail. This bit took a few attempts. I had to have DiscoverBot trying to pull backwards; only to have his body 'snap' forward like a stretched piece of elastic. His head also had to act independently of this and snap forward like a flail. It took a few tweaks but was looking nice in no time at all.

You want to play rough, tough guy? DiscoverBot readies himself by cracking his knuckles. It was either that or 'spitting' on them and rubbing them again. Crakcing knuckles looked a lot more 'tougher' though and helped to portray the "That's it; you're in for it now!" attitude.

Much like before; DiscoverBot had to pull on the lever and snap back like a piece of elastic. Only this time; it was with 2 hands and had a lot more force going into it. It wasn't too bad; as I used roughly the same moves as the last one; only emphasised them a lot more this time around.

This was actually the trickiest bit. Instead of falling backwards; it seemed like more fun to have DiscoverBot fall flat on his face. To do this; I had to flip his body around. No easy task. I had to flip the hands around, swap feet and spin the body... all naturally! It took a lot of acting (Anyone looking through my window must have thought I was a nutter by now)... but eventually I cracked it!

And off he goes! DiscoverBot was sent flying... Looks fancy but was very easy to keyframe in.

... only to ground to a halt on the floor. Aww... don't worry; he's ok. All I had to do now was go back and flip the lever as he flies off. Job done!

Now to let you in on another little secret... DiscoverBot has a stunt double! Yes, after he falls; he gets up and walks back onto the stage. However... this next bit is all done by his stunt double! Why put that in? Well, the IK's had an annoying little bug on occasions. They'd reverse! In other words; they'd flip inside out! Naturally this was a pain in the backside and I couldn't seem to find a good way to fix this. However; I noticed that this only seemed to happen when the body was rotated in some way (Thus; the IK links got twisted)... and spinning the body around would definitely do this! So when I came to start making DiscoverBot walk back onto the stage... his legs kept flipping inside out. In the end; this became such a hassle... I recycled my old animation! I chopped the initial walk cycle from the first Ident; and stuck that into this one! And thus; the entire walk had been taken care of; without any inverted legs whatsoever. All I had to do was to hide DiscoverBot2 in the rafters; and bring him down when the first version fell off of the screen.

All I had to do form here was to edit the hands and motion of the walk cycle; thus creating a 'dazed' look about DiscoverBot as he staggered back onto the stage. You wouldn't have guessed this was the exact same walk cycle from the first ident, would you?

And in comes the boulder! Wipe out! Sadly; I had to animate the boulder myself. It would have been nice to use a more realistic 'roll' with the help of the reactor tool... but that proved useless. No matter how big or steep I made the ramp (It spanned 10000 pixels or something in the end), it just never built up the velocity I needed. It would pretty much trundle on and hit DiscoverBot. So in the end; I just picked it up and swung it across. Thinking about it now; it might have been better to have DB hit by a wrecking ball; and it then swings back onto the stage; with "Discovery Channel" written on it...

To plug Discover Channel; I rolled in a smaller ball with the logo on it after DiscoverBot was hit, and subsequently collapsed onto the floor. Not the most logical plug; but one of the better ideas of putting the Discovery Channel logo into the end of the Ident. Nonetheless; a sweet video! 2 down!