Blocking

Learning how to block is essential for an animator, i don't believe that i myself have given it a lot of thought which is why i have decided to use this project productively and add it to my blog. for this tutorial i am going to try and improve my dialogue scene as i thought it was lacking any movement at all, for this i will be using the clip from the film "zoolander" which is what the piece of dialogue originated from!




Okay here i have sketched out what i think are the key poses in the scene,now looking at it i think this isn't exactly the best example as the poses are very small and not very exaggerated but as a first try i think it will be quite good because its so simple.

Okay so as i learned from the spline tutorial a linear tangent is probably best for blocking out a scene

i also read in that same book that its easier to do your camera shots first and let the camera lead the pose so i think I'm going to try that as well while I'm at it.

Okay here is the timed shots of the camera, i tried to make it as accurate as possible but obviously  it will need some tweaking when all the final animation is done.

         

Okay now that the blocking is done for the camera it is time to block out the poses of the characters.

Okay so for the basic pose i think it all went pretty well, its not identical to the clip but i think it still looks effective and it captures the emotions of the characters, the timing is pretty much all sorted out as well, and although there isn't really much to say for this little trick I've learned, it doesn't mean it's not as important, if anything I'd say its one of the most important things I've learned in character animation and its pretty ridiculous that i haven't learned about it already!