Onwards! My computer is, sadly, starting to shows its age and complained about animating the models with the meshes included. It would work fine, but had a slight lag to it - slowing down the entire process and losing the fluidity of the animation I'm comfortable with (After all, it's easier to create cleaner animations when everything moves smoothly!). As a result, I decided to hide the body mesh and work with just the bones. The core animations would obviously come from just moving these, but I now lacked details of how the mesh would exactly match. Working half-blind, I had to hope my enveloping was clean, and frequently unhid the meshes at various intervals to see the effects of the bones. On the bright side - I could now run 3DS Max at full speed and had more scope to create a wider variety of clean moves. So before I could start, I had the set up the scene and initial poses.
The first step was the all-important Rock-Paper-Scissors game. The stances didn't require major changes to the 'action' stances shown here. Kris was given a somewhat empowering stance, whilst Carl got away with a lazy standing posture. Because the camera would only focus on their arms and hands, the rest of their bodies remained motionless for the first bit. After Kris' hand slams down, the camera panned out the above view (Bottom-Left is the Camera window), where the 2 charcaters suddenly come to life and react to the game.
Kris is happy (obviously), so pulls a few celebratory moves. He punches the air, clenches his fists in a "Yes!" motion... and then I threw in an odd motion that was big around my School when I did my A-Levels: He wags his finger victoriously. You basically point your index finger upwards, and then lazily wave your hand forward and back. It looks silly, but it's just this sort of weird gesture that friends use between eachother, which I wanted to incorporate. Kris and Carl are buddies. I want them to be good mates and not just 2 aliens at a chess board. So I wanted to throw in a few of these to show a 'connection' for want of a better word. Kris' movement was easy...Carl, however, posed a few problems. I wanted him to angrily click his finger and then pull his chair in and pretty much sulk. The clicking of the finger was easy - Throw is arm across his body and violently move his head forward very quickly. This gave the impression of a quick 'Dammit!' moment. This part was fine, however, as shown in the above picture: The next bit was my least favourite. Obviously in a sulk, I needed Carl do drag the chair across in a huff. I couldn't have him suddenly calm down and delicately pull his chair in. No, he needed to drag the chair in with his foot. Whilst this might not sound difficult, getting the foot to correctly hook the chair and pull it in realistically took a lot of tweaking (Not to mention making it look comfortable, and not as if he's contorting himself!)
The next step was Kris rotating the board so he could play as white. Carl would slump forward and rest on his hand - Nice and easy. Kris' moving of the board didn't actually prove very difficult. All I did was move his hands how I thought they should move (By acting this out on my desk repeatedly) and then moved the board accordingly. It took 3 loops to finally move the board around... not helped by the fact that Carl's arm got in the way too! So I also had to have him lazily lift it out of the way. The only thing I needed to change here was to group the board and chess pieces. If left individually, they would rotate around their own axis (Causing the board to move, but the pieces to just spin in place). Luckily, grouping them allowed the pieces to move with the board... so I didn't have to animate any of that in! Phew!
On a roll, I had Kris join Carl in taking a seat. Being more 'formal', Kris pulls his in gently and parks himself on it... then I spotted my script and realised that I completely forgot the Hi-5 sequence! I had sat Carl down too early! I ideally needed to keep him standing as Kris moved the board (Though, in hindsight, that would have looked quite unusual. Having him slump was certainly more 'natural'). Instead of going back and changing (Which could potentially throw off all the timing!), I decided to alter the script slightly and have both of them sit down, ready - And do a "Oh yeah, we have to do our secret handshake! It's what we always do". I simply project my absent-mindedness onto those 2
So I stood Kris up again, extending out his hand - To which Carl cheers up and follows suit. They then proceed to Hi-5. Now initially, I wanted them to Hi-5 and Low-5 (Basically one Hi-5's the other and then they reverse the position of their hands), but it was when it came to this section that I realised a sudden limitation: My characters were too far away! They couldn't get their arms close enough properly slap eachother's palms. In lieu of this: I changed their secret hand-shake to a "Side-5" (Taking the hand-shake gesture, they Hi-5 with their palms and then reverse this by Hi-5'ing the backs of their hands). Though they would only properly connect with their fingers, it would far easier to mask this than a generic Hi-5 would. So I opened their hands and executed the move. The key to adding 'energy' to this was to rotate the bodies along with the arm motions. Just moving the arms would have looked lackluster. From the 2 side-5's, they would then come out and do another silly old-school gesture. I have no idea what it's called, but I'll just call it the 'Rock'. It's the really stupid gesture where 2 people hit their clenched fist against the other's. Normally done when saying "Respect". No, I don't get it either.... but it's cheesey enough to work perfectly for these 2!
GThe animation was finished with both taking a seat (again!) and preparing for the first move. Kris rubs his hands together excitedly and Carl lazily swings his arm by his side.
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