In part 1 I blocked the Animation, created the key poses on 8’s and add some breakdowns on 4’s

1) Adding breakdown poses/inbetweens

I added some breakdowns on 4’s

2) Stability/locking

The first aspect to work on was the feet position throughout the animation: they were not standing on the ground and I had not firstly used the heel roll on the controls to make them bend when the character jumped, so for each keyframe I adjusted their rotation, so that they would be evenly standing on the floor, and make sure the translate y was 0 (when not jumping)

I also noticed that the hands controls were positioned incorrectly since the hands were outside the actual controls: they should be always inside the hands controls.

Another element that needed some work was the root control since both translation y and x and its rotation too were not keyed correctly and that was affecting the others controls too and correcting it helped me with the elbow popping too.

Another element which contributed to the elbow popping was the torso control, its rotation in particular, which, as it is shown in the picture, was tilted to one side initially.

Even the elbow and knee controls were not positioned correctly at first since they were too close to the character geometry.

3) Converting to Splines

After I cleaned the animation with stepped keys I converted the keyframes into splines selecting the keys with the character set and converting them in the graph editor.

4) Polishing: Graph Editor Clean Up 1

I after started cleaning the animation from the main controls such as the centre gravity, the pelvis and the spine and then concentrating on the elbow pole control or knees pole control and hands and feet. While editing the graph I was checking both the graph editor and the viewport to see with changes was I making with the graph considering the fact that only translate y follows the “visual” movement of the viewport and the rotation in the graph follows a more abstract path; however, I only made the necessary changes since I did not want to change the nature of the Animation. Switching on and off the layers of the animation helped me in the process to visualise better the movement. While editing the graph I always played the whole animation to check its fluidity. I used the flat tangents for peaks of curves or for similar values keys so that they did not interpolate. I have also adjusted some curves using weighted tangents, although I have not used too much since the key movement of the animation was concentrated on very few keyframes close together, so the curves could not be too wide.

So, for each control I have checked all the movement curves both translate and rotation and adjusted, not drastically, the graph editor following the animation in the viewport.

difficult to work with since the elbow was popping too much especially when the character position itself to to the volleyball bump.

I then focus the attention on the fingers animation since that when both hands came together for the volleyball bump the fingers overlapped each other so I have adjusted the keyframes of the different fingers controls in the graph editor so that they won’t.

I then finished off by cleaning the splines of the knees poles and feet after I have converted them in splines.

5) Elbow & Knee Popping

AS it is shown in the picture in the first blocked poses stage the knees controls were not keyed in the correct position, so for each keyframe I have adjusted the distance between the poles and the knees and edited their orientation as well for when the knees bend for the volleyball bump.

I first tried to diagnose the problem which could have possibly caused by both the hands controls position and the top part of the spine rotation. I also edited their position since at first they were quite close to the elbows.

6) Polish the movements after the splines had been cleaned to refine the poses; each pose throughout the animation should look good I should check for balance and anything out of place, looking at details first in the viewport and after in the graph editor:

1- balance: check the root control to increase the balance to improve the pose which can also lead to improve the rhythm of the overall animation and see the graph editor first the translate and after the rotation.

Moreover from the graph editor it was clear that the splines in some parts were too flat which is unnatural because the human body cannot stay that still or had a linear rate (happens only with falling with gravity, which is not the case), so I had to make sure

2 – spine/pelvis: work on the pelvis controls to help the spine create an arc while doing the action and also edited the rotation to keep the high balance of a pose. in doing so I have also edited the feet translate x in space to find the right balance.

3 – arms: during the volleyball bump they should not stretch out too much since it looks unnatural, they should bend slightly and also the wrists should not be as much rotated as they were. I should also check the shoulders controls since their position was quite unnatural and could have also contributed to the problem I had with the elbows.

Another thing the ball squash and stretch: one frame before the ball hits the ball should have been more stretched.

One last thing to do for the elbow pole popping was to check the torso and spine controls: the rotate of the spine was moving forward as the translate of the torso is moving in the opposite direction.

these are the corrections I have applied and the elbow popping was considerably improved

final polish

One last aspect I had to work on was the impact with the ball key: it was like the spine was compensating for the root wrong movement so I made sure that the torso and the spine controls were positioned correctly and the root rotated and translated correctly.

7) Key Retiming: Checking Rhythm

the timing was not too bad while playing the playblast however I have decided to do a global retiming in the Graph editor which actually helped the fluidity and rhythm of the overall animation. I also checked the splines in the graph editor after the retiming for adjustments.

8) Playblast & add After Effects Pixel Motion Blur

I after playblasted the animation and added a pixel motion blur in after effects