Card Toss: Animating

This scene was particularly tricky to animate. I remember how difficult it was to animate the hands on the moom rig. Its the fact that all the fingers behave independently yet some have influence over others. I didn't want to go with realistic hand animation, but even if I wanted to this was not possible. Unfortunately the individual key-able connections had been overwritten when Andy was rigging the hands. This was unfortunate but it was too late to fix the hands so I decided to go ahead with the animation. I didn't want to wait around. I do not blame Andy, the work he did on the rig was superb and enough for what we wanted and I think there is a way around this small problem. After all Andy would not call himself a rigger as this is not exactly his specialism. If I am clever with the use of camera angles and poses I should be able to hide or at least disguise the problems with the rig.

Environment Setup

Lighting Setup

Camera View

I wanted a close up once again so that there was a opportunity to see some animation in the hands, I also wanted the shot to be as close to the original as possible (shot08). I am not a fan of using the same shots too often and I dislike not including close ups. Close ups are a great way of introducing detail, establishing the scene or informing the viewer. There is also an element of immediacy. Although close-ups are unrealistic in reality, in cinema they work really well. Using a variety of shots demonstrates good filmic language and is more engaging to the viewer instead of having very flat camera placements. After all I want this piece to be as theatrical as possible. I thought that introducing the glass would add some detail to the scene, however I chose to remove it primarily because it looked terrible and secondly because I though it would be a distraction.

I noticed that the fingers could not be animated separately and that when animating the hand in as far as the fist attribute, the little finger seemed to be distorting and pulling the geometry of the ring finger. I tried altering the vertexes to manipulate the geometry back into shape, however when I dragged the slider along the timeline the vertexes were put back into their original positions. I have a feeling it was due to the painting of the weights, as the ring finger seemed to squash and the tip of the little finger began to elongate when I closed Frank's right hand into a fist. This was a minor problem however because I realized that you don't actually see this imperfection due to the lighting setup within the scene. The geometry that is being affected is hidden in shadow. This was fortunate, however I was not about to ask Andy to fix the hands, after all time was running out and Andy had his own film to worry about.

I would have liked to have animated the hands as realistically as possible and to have been able to animate each finger separately. However I had to accept that this animation was far from perfect due to the limitations of the rig. But I worked with what I had and made the best of it and I think I did a pretty good job. I included some slow in and slow out with some overlap as his right hand flicked and tossed the card. The most challenging aspects of this animation were the fluidity and pacing of the motion of the right hand and to get the behavior of the hand as believable as possible. In the end I thought that it would be best to keep things subtle and simple. I also added some nuances to the left hand which I was most proud of. I had to parent the deck of cards with the left wrist joint and the card that was to be thrown was parented with the right wrist joint. At first I was unsure of how to animate the props in conjunction with the hands, but I remembered the process of parenting and it worked perfectly.

The original Storyboard.