Step-by-step Bring Your characters to life

one reference

Studying the movements of the action you need to imitate is the key to success. Watch Youtube videos or make your own. In this case I recorded myself and friends drumming to understand the subtle movement of the neck. With compositing software you can track the elements you recorded in order to figure out the kind of circular motion you need to replicate.

two numbers

Analyse your reference videos and watch them in slow motion. Take notes and write down the number of frames an action takes from the start to finish. For example, the left arm takes two frames to hit the drums, 14-15 frames to go back to position and four to five frames to rotate the wrist in position to strike again.

three Simplicity

Keep the Graph Editor as clean as possible and delete unnecessary key frames. Every time I find myself in a difficult situation I retrace my steps and start afresh with fewer key frames. Choose the right moments to convey force in the animation and remember to follow the concepts of anticipation, exaggeration, action and follow-through.

four JIGGLE

Animating the jiggle on the flesh of your character is a great way to convey force and to bring the character to life. Just add an Influence Object to the rigged model and paint an influence of 0.3 on the part of the model that is going to be affected. I personally prefer to animate manually, instead of just copying the key frames, so as to add some variety.