Here’s my Blocking Plus assignment! It’s been a tough week. Didn’t get quite as much time to work on my shot as I’d have liked, so I didn’t try splining it. That said, I tend to prefer to have everything really nailed down with plenty of keys before I move onto spline anyway.

I tried to cover all the notes from the great critique last week. The one main I couldn’t manage was the increased time during the squeamish “Oooo” section near the end. I didn’t have enough time (that’s two weeks in a row now where I’ve not had my critique until Wednesday) and I’m also concerned about making my shot too long because of all the fiddly refining I’m going to have to do over the next few weeks.

Also, I’ve set up the apple constraints and blocked in the animation. The worm is built, rigged and working but I’m going to block the movement in next week once the apple animation is ready.

Here are a few additional notes that I want to address this week:

• I’m having trouble conveying the physicality of actually picking the apple. It would be nice to get a small tug in there, like he’s actually plucked the apple from the tree. I’m thinking it might be easier to switch to IK for that part.
• I’ve been trying to work out what to do with the screen-right (SR) foot during the sliding section (around FRM95-110) and most of the things I’ve tried to do with the leg have just resulted in knee pops! I think it’s working OK for now but I feel like I need a more elegant solution.
• Finally, I’m wondering if I should I start putting in the squeamish “quivers” in the arms and hands this week or if that’s more a polishing task? Hopefully Michelle will address that when my critique lands.

Has anyone got a good method for doing shakes or is it just put in lots of keys and jiggle them about in the graph editor? Haven’t really done that before!

Have a great week everyone!