Applying the principle ‘Solid Drawing’ from the 12 Principles of animation into 3-dimensional space requires an understanding of solid posing that conveys story and character without any movement. The following poses are referenced using images of real people.
Action Pose (Kicking Stance)
Taking the positioning and elements of weight from the reference image, I focused on the positioning of the feet. I tried to replicate the simplistic rig to the best of my ability. Manipulating camera angles, I angled it as a lower medium shot to try and convey the wait and action to engage with the audience.
Action Pose (Reaching)
With the reference image showing a jump in the absence of a solid force of gravity, I tried to emulate the gesture’s ‘lightness’ of the gesture, making the posting display more effeminate features to add a further sense of character.
Action Pose 3 (Teapot Spin/ Crouch Kick)
In attempts to push the boundaries of standard action positions, I used a reference image of a psychically complex figure skating move and tried to gain a sense of the complexity of the sense of weight while keeping a strong ‘C’ line of action in the figures back.
Action Pose (Sword Stance)
cooperating an object into dynamic action posing, and looking at the key lines of action in the reference pictures, like the “C” line shape created in the form of the back. Also, taking into consideration the signs of weight in the feet, knees and hips to create a stance that has visible kinetic power behind them.
Emotional Pose (Sadness)
Trying to convey emotional expression through a character rig without a facial rig provides an exciting challenge and requires powerful body positions to convey the emotion intended. Creating the negative space in the arms makes clear posing in the emotional expression.
Emotional Pose (Anger/Bossy)
This pose is more subtle in its line of action. However, I tried to reduce the ‘stiffness’ by keeping the back in a ‘C’ line of action. I also tried to reduce the symmetry of the pose but standing the feet in the opposite directions to add a level of naturalism that does not make the weight distribution seem perfect in stance.
Emotional Pose (Happy/ Jumping for Joy)
I tried to push the exaggeration on this one more extensively than the previous, giving its a slightly unrealistic sense of gravity. However, I think this adds clarity to the emotional expression of the body.
Silhouettes
Creating a strong silhouette is an essential part of keyframing animation and is reminiscent of the initial thumbnailing process used in the early process of animation to convey strong performances. This helps gain a sense of strong lines of action without getting distracted by elements of character design such as hair and clothing and colour design to make sure the position is as strong as possible. Reflectively, some of these could have been pushed and exaggerated further, especially in the emotional poses, as the emotion needs to be very clear in the body without facial expression. It lacks in the ‘angry’ feeling and appears more like ‘relaxed’ pointing.