Final Animation

Five weeks of animation, one week of rendering and numerous grey hairs later, here is my final project. Enjoy!

Sophie's Animation Journey

With my character having reached the point where it was ready to start animating, it was time to nail down exactly what I was going to animate! Before sitting down with Maya to actually animate the character, I had to determine what I was intending to produce.

I started with thumbnail drawings, exploring movements and poses to fill in the blocks outlined by the storyboards.

I also had acting lessons with my coach Kitty, and filmed myself acting out each scene to use as a life reference. I also used references from books and films, particularly the following:

• "Acting for Animators: A complete guide to performance animation," by Ed Hooks, a very good general reference.
• "The Glenn Miller Story," for all the dancing showgirls.
• www.champagneshowgirls.com for real-life Vegas showgirls.
• "Touching the Void," for its dehydrated, hallucinating crawling.

Sorry guys; you're not going to see my acting reference videos! As a consolation, here's a sneak peek of my favourite scene from my final animation.