Animating the smaller robot being hit in the face

Using the suggestions and feedback Steve had given me before hand I decided to make the scene at the end with the smaller robot being hit in the face with the ball, that is thrown off screen by the larger robot. Being hit in the face quite hard by the ball, I decided to over exaggerate the scene by having a slow motion action as the character gets hit by the ball. I filmed reference footage for this animation which is in the compilation of all my reference footage.

The first video below is the basic blocking for the animation, so by using the reference footage with frame numbers attached I was able to animate the key poses for the slow motion action. To animate the slow motion effect I simple added the slow motion effect to the reference footage and animated it that way. Worse scenario I would use the effect with this animation to make it even slower. So this part was just to get the key poses of the head being pushed back by the ball.

The second video below is how I have used the key poses and the reference footage to fill in all of the inbetween frames, allowing me to have a better guide to the timing of the slow motion action. Using the frame numbers on my reference footage I simple did the middle frames between each of the key frames and then the middle frames between the inbetween/ break frames. This allowed me to create a basic animation sequence where the action was relatively clear on screen.

Below I have fully animated the action sequence for the ball hitting the smaller robot in the face. Using the reference footage I was able to fill in the rest of the gaps in the frames to help build the over exaggerated swing of the head as it gets hit in the head. I have tried to consider moving other parts of the body more dramatically but at this time I am mainly focusing on the head as that is where most of the exaggeration will take place.

Below I have then taken that fully roughed out animation and added the overly exaggerated facial features on top. Because the ball is moving quite fast as it hits the character in the face I thought about going that one step further and adding the eye pop out from the head to show the power of the ball as it hits him. Having this overly exaggerated face shows the a more comedic side to the animation allowing the scene to be more appealing to the audience as it is something that would not generally happen if you got hit in the face.

Looking over this animation I realised that the face in some places is slightly covered by the eye lines that I used for reference when drawing the character. So next I should consider editing that out if I have time, but right now my main priority is getting the animation finished in it’s roughed out stage and then adding it together with the other scenes.