 Welcome back to another FNA and today I want to talk about one of the biggest posing mistakes. And by the way, after all this time, I never started a clip saying who I am. So I'm JD, I have a channel that focuses on animation and lectures and acting analysis and rig reviews and all kinds of stuff and I have my own workshops. So if that is something that is interesting to you, subscribe and hit that bell button so you don't miss anything that I upload. Now, posing. In the future, of course, there will be an FNA just about posing in all the intricacies and details and all that good stuff, but there is a posing mistake that every student makes. And I think it's, of course, it's not 100%, but it's 99.9%. And the reason why I'm focusing on that right now is because it starts the moment you open the rig. And it has to do with something that I mentioned in previous FNA, the difference between a character pose and a rig pose. So the common mistake is that when you open a rig, this is what it looks like. But a lot of times the arms are straight out. Sometimes you have poses to wear like this, maybe straight down, they're usually in some form of T pose or biker pose or whatever you want to call them. And of course, you know, animals can have them like that, but they are straight. Everything is default because of how they are rigged. But that's a problem. That is not your character pose. That is not the headspace that the character is in. Are they? I mean, my usual example is tired, happy, sad, but there's a certain state of mind that the character is in. And if you do a shot, and if it's an acting shot that focuses more on the character side versus just body mechanics, something happened to that character before and something is going to happen afterwards. The character is going to go through a change within the shot. So for instance, just take me when I'm here, I mean, I have an arm rest here, I'm leaning like this, like that is my intro pose. And I'm happy and I like teaching and I like doing this. But I'm not like, I'm not like this. I can't even hold that pose. I'm not in a default pose. I'm in a certain mood in a certain headspace. So when you open the character Maya, don't just take down those arms and then anime, you have to think about who is my character? What are they doing? Why are they doing this? What is the current state of mind? What are the current emotions? And what is the arc of the character motion that they're going to go through in the shot and so on and so on. So instead of thinking about your characters like this, where they're completely default, think about examples that you can see movies or in designs and sketches that we have that tells us something about the character. Dude is usually like that. They have different poses in the movie, but still there's a certain way of them standing and looking or Mr Bean. Mr Bean has a certain face. And speaking of face, it doesn't have to be the face. But if you do a full body shot, think about, well, maybe this is the default pose. They're always like that always shoulders up. If it's a facial shot, it could be always like this. And if it's maybe a an animal, this is my dog, Indy. It could always be on his eyes, always on his back. It's kind of sleepy, but he has big ears and he likes to just roll around. He's usually on the bed. He's always sleeping. So try to get away from the rushed impulse, maybe of opening the rig and, okay, well, let me just, you know, get into look at my reference, maybe on my sketches and let's go and animate. But maybe you think about maybe you want to push that pose further, really make it a character pose. So when you're Maya and you have a character like this, right? This is the ninja rig that I reviewed. And by the way, I totally did not see this. So when they look around and see all the controls, what I completely missed is this one. I was talking how this rig doesn't have an IK FK switch for the spine. And that is not true. So that is a complete oversight on my end. You even have some squash and stretch here. So if you check out my review, that is something I wanted to add. Well, let's get back to this. So this is your character, right? Well, don't just do well, I'm going to bring down my arms with that doesn't feel natural, I guess. And now I'm going to animate. So, okay, well, maybe this is not quite your character, maybe the character is a bit more deflated. So think about shoulder posing. So maybe you're starting poses, something like this, maybe you're going to really detail out just the the change in the posing, maybe the look. And sometimes what I do even in rough blocking is that that very first frame that first pose, I completely pose it out into complete detail fingers and the face of that first frame sets the tone. That is my pose. That is my expression of at least where the character starts, if there's a change throughout the shot of the character. But that first pose, I really go into what is my character. And it's sometimes, you know, get lost in the blocking, you're like, I'm not going to work. Then I can go back to that first thing like this, this is the character, this is the mood, this is the tone it should set. And a good example is Nick Wild from Zootopia. If you look at that pose, I mean, that's just called the meaner, he's constantly in that pose throughout the movies kind of relax and yeah, I can do this. And then it has room to grow somewhere, there will be changes. If he suddenly is stiffer, that's going to stand out. If he's suddenly more afraid, that's going to stand out. Because at the beginning, we've seen that confident, relaxed pose that really sets the tone for this is the character. So yes, there are things about posing and readability and appeal and silhouette and all that stuff. But don't forget when you start the shot, think about who is my character? What is the state of mind of the character? What is he or she or what is the animal, whatever is the character thinking, what is their emotion at the beginning, at least of the shot, and then try to pose that out and get really into detail, either through writing it down or just posing it roughly. But I would recommend just do a really nice pose, even if you go into detail into that first frame pose that can set the tone for the rest of the shot. And that is huge because I really see almost never a student do this. When I look at a first blocking, it's usually that was the rig, I can see they just put the arms down and it started moving things. But usually there's no distinct character in that pose, something that tells us something, what their state of mind is, and so on. So again, don't just take those arms down and start animating really think about what is the character and what is the pose going to communicate body language wise about my character. Speaking about communication, if you want to communicate with me about working with you, I do have workshops you can sign up at any time. So if you feel like this is cool and helpful and you want me to help you and apply this to your shots, you can sign up at any time, link in the description with all the information about my workshop. And if you think this was cool, you want to miss anything, subscribe, hit that bell button to upload almost every day, no weekends. And that way you won't miss anything. Speaking of missing, I don't know, can I say something? I don't know, time wise, if you're still watching, thank you for watching. I appreciate the time that you put into watching my clips. And that's it from me. I will see you next week.