So I decided that I would make Stumpy jump without thinking
too much about how to do it and testing anything out and just launched full
pelt into the animating. I recorded a quick video of myself performing a spectacular
leap into the air and used it as a rough guide. Now using Dragonframe this was
super easy to add in and move around to sync it to where I wanted it to be in
relation to my animated frames which came in handy twice during this shoot. In
the image below you can see Dragonframe open with my line up layer and frames
and the x-sheet on the right that I was using to put some frames onto 2’s as I
shot this jump at 25 frames per second.
The rig was quite a pain during this test and as it’s just
made from wire the knees and hips and anything that fancied it would just go
off in all directions instead of just bending in a straight line. I was
constantly pushing the knees back into position and making sure that the hips
stayed in a relatively straight line as they went down into the anticipation
position. Everything was going pretty smoothly until the actual jump and I
suddenly realised that the rig I’ve got a) doesn’t fit into the wire rig so I
just had to smush it into his flesh b) stumpy is waaayyy too heavy for the rig
being full on plasticine c) needed tightening d) didn’t really stick to the
metal sheet with just the magnets I’ve got so needed some blue tack as well.
But after I fixed all of those problems mid shoot and then lined up Stumpy
again the actual in air poses weren’t too difficult, I just had to over shoot
the move as the rig would then sag and bend with the weight of stumpy when I
let go.
During the descent I forgot what the right arm was up to and
he goes a bit all over the place but generally it all went alright. Unfortunately
as this test was shot over three days in small intervals last night I must have
bumped into the camera in my sleep so the test had to be cut short he was going
to finish up the arm movements that start towards the end in a gaining his
balance again movement but at least the actual jump was finished so not all
lost. The test is linked below, enjoy and let me know what you think