Rude Awakening

A quick little animation exercise I did. A guy is sleeping against a tree only to be awakened by a football to the face! He has no intention of throwing the ball back.

I originally started to do this using Kiopaa’s Pantin Rig for Blender 2.52 Alpha. However, while I was blocking in the key poses I realized that the rig wasn’t working as well as it should in the new blender 2.53 Beta. When I tried to turn him all the way around, his body warped. So I had to change the animation up a little bit. (Originally he was going to turn and walk away with the football.) Since I couldn’t turn him all the way around, I made him sit back down at the tree. During this whole process, I was having quite a hard time animating the eyes. I just couldn’t move them where I wanted to, so I was starting to get fed up with this rig. (it was meant for Blender 2.52 after all.) My self imposed deadline of Wedsday was drawing near, so I knew I had to do something. I don’t know of any working rigs for the new Blender 2.53, and I didn’t have time to rig up my own. So I went back to 2.49b, and loaded up Nathan Vegdahl’s Simple Biped Rig I basically redid everything with this new rig. I was having a much easier time. I didn’t have as much time to work on this week’s project as much as I would like, due to those setbacks I mentioned, and other responsibilities. Check back here next Wednesday and see what knew thing I have to share with you guys.

Also, you might want to keep checking back, because I have something else I want to share. What is it you ask? You’re just going to have to find out for yourself!