The emotion I was aiming to portray in the character was sneakiness. The story behind the scene was a simple thief seeing a random box, with no one guarding it, and after checking inside, found something valuable. Once in his hands, he starts to move backwards to get out as quietly as possible.
The main principles I had used was exaggeration, timing, and (hopefully anticipation). In the beginning of the animation, I made it a point to have the character lean (further) backwards and move his upper body to exaggerate the weight being shifted, as well as the character checking his surroundings. From there, as the thief moves towards the box, he moves his fingers to set up his hands to grab the box from its pedestal.
The main challenges I found is that getting the timing and weight down for the character’s steps proved to be difficult, as I wanted to have an exaggerated thief move around, but not seem too heavy at the same time. And the second would be using the curves in the character’s movements, with the approach itself proving difficult, my focus may have been towards the timing and weight of each step, which in hindsight was not as ideal as I once thought.
The main thing I changed from the first project to the second would have been that I made sure to include as detailed a thumbnail page as possible. I learned that with a proper foundation it would make things easier when animating the character. I kept as close to the reference video as I could get, but as I began animating the character, I soon realized that the difference between the stepped to the fully animated short would not be as simple. I grew to like the exit less and less, to the point that I decided to change the ending to see if that was any better. While I’m still not quite as satisfied with the ending, I feel that I did as best as I could with the time I had left.
