Animation - Animating with Blender: How to Create Short Animations from Start to Finish - page 206

jagged part of the path and adjust its position
to what you think will produce a smoother
curve. Set a key on that frame. Of course, if
automatic keyframing is still on, you won't
have to worry about doing this. Then select
the bone in question and use the Calculate
Paths command again to redraw the path.
Hopefully you will get a smoother curve, like
the one in Figure 11.36. Notice how the path
curves gently up and down to follow the up
and down motion of the pelvis during the
walk and how it forms little loops near the
ends where turning and kneeling actions
happen.

When you adjust motion like this, make sure
that nothing bad has happened to other pieces
of animation “nearby” in the timeline. For
example, a slight move may make a foot that was supposed to be locked to the fl oor slide or make a part of
the character's body pass through a solid object.

Figure 11.36 The bone's path is smoothed, which produces better
animation

Facial Expressions

While you are perfectly welcome to add facial expressions during the main animation phase, I have found that
I like to wait until the animation is more refi ned. Things can change when working in overlap, anticipation
and follow through that alter the feeling of the overall performance, giving you a slightly different set of cues
for the facial expressions.

Proper timing and overlap are certainly necessary when working with the face, although using anticipation
and follow through are inappropriate except for the most exaggerated expressions. Anticipation and follow
through are such necessary tools in bodily animation because they simulate the physical momentum of hav-
ing a body. There is not a lot of mass and momentum involved in typical movements of the face.

The best tool for animating facial expressions well is simply careful observation. Watch the video. Keep
a mirror beside your workstation. Observe the order in which the different areas of the face move when
changing expressions.

Generally, expressions are led by the eyes. Knowing this, you could signal deceit in a character by, for example,
moving the mouth into a smile fi rst, followed by the eyes.

“Automatic” Motion: Breathing and Blinking

Depending on how you have built your rig, a simple breathing effect can often be achieved by slightly scal-
ing a chest control bone. As long as nothing is going on that will alter your character's breathing pattern in