For today's WIP, I made the following changes:
- repositioned the arm holding the spaceship so the elbow stuck out more, away from body, for a more natural holding pose, thanks Charlie!
- Re-aimed the eyes throughout
- adjusted some brow squish and timing in first CU
- Adjusted the overall happy face to be a little less crazed happy, toned it down, so it feels better with the dialogue
- adjusted arm/hand animation placing ship on track and moving to leg
- added weight shift and in wide shot
- went through whole animation and added in the x-axis movement of the head to all spines and neck, and overlapped the action to bring the rest of the body to life and soften the anim
- added some shoulder motion
- adjusted head/neck turn timing at end CU
- Lots of little timing adjustments, but no rekeying anything.
So I think this animation is feeling less stiff now and really starting to get there. I am thankful to my friends who game me some excellent critique, much of which found it's way into these small revisions. I feel I am surely past the halfway point, and will from here on out just continue filling in the breakdown animation. I can see lip sync in the far horizon! That will be fun to get to!