AM.2.11 Clarity

So there I was, happily animating along, smoothing out the body mechanics for the assignment this week, when I finally realized how far I'd missed the whole clarity thing. Errrh, yea, dang Irene it's only the whole point of the WEEK!!! No one has any idea why Stewie falls over (I think I knew once, but I forget).

*sigh*

It just goes to show how I didn't plan properly again. Well, at least this one will be more ok than the last project. I think I can just focus on the ending and rework that whole bit ~ start from figuring out what Stewie's thinking at the moment and replan from there. Here are my new thoughts so far on why Stewie collapses:

• back breaks


• he's too weak and the wires pull him back (the original idea from last week)


• the wires snap and he shoots backwards


• his foot slips (what?!!?! who'd be looking at his foot?! no, scratch this one)


• successfully rips out the wires with his uber strength, but the overlapping action on a graphics card which flies out on the ends of the wires swings around in a foreboding arc to peg him in the back of the head and knock him out

Uhhh, so some of those are probably more manageable than others, but I don't think any are particularly good. Whatever the case, unless I go for the back strain option, it looks like I'll need cables in there. Cables have been problematic. Brad was super helpful and sent me a simple rig last week, but I can't animate it right. So far, I've only managed to rig something which bends around using spline IK and something else which squetches in length according to a curve. Too bad those two qualities aren't on the same rig!!! So I decided to let it go for the week as my crappy rigging was distracting me from animating.

On the animation itself, the fellow AMers on the forums have been great as usual in pointing things out, but I couldn't wrap my head fully around the body mechanics of any of their suggestions this week and implement them well enough. Bah, conceptualization/visualization problems. Ok, break for today and back again later...once clarity sets in...too much confusion...can't think anymore....