 Welcome back to an FNA and it is absolutely a four new animators today because today I want to talk about testing your body mechanics skills. So what does that mean? So basically, when I teach, I look at my students' reels and I look at where they are skillset wise and then I can kind of guide them where they should be going. Sometimes you have students that are not quite there, but then the assignment calls for like a 20 second two character lip sync piece and that's just quite the leap. So I have to kind of look at maybe you should go back to body mechanics and practice that more before going into lip sync. And sometimes it goes further where you have to go back to bouncing balls, but you got to really master the principles. But one of the things that I do when the body mechanics don't quite work is to have them do a sit down, but it's not a like a big hero six style character sit down that has personality. That's really all super cool. It is extremely exaggerated where you just sit. It's super vanilla, not even arms and take the arms out. It's just the root upper body and the head. And it's all about a very exaggerated sit down where the root has to stop and then you do this kind of movement like this. It's purely to get into the habit of breaking up the roots, the chest and the head for some Drago overlap and an understanding how when one thing stops, the weight of the rest of the body still has to continue to go down. There's a weight transfer. There's that moment that can't just suddenly stop, but it's a transfer of that momentum. Root stops, chest goes down and so on. So basically what I do is I do a demo and that's what I'm going to do here. I'm going to show you and I put in that demo that I did for the class. I kind of walks you through a very exaggerated sit down. Again, this is not for naturalism. This is not to do like an acting piece. This is purely exaggerated. You're going to show the root with a nice arc, a bit of a pause and then a plop. So this is about weight. If you just do the root only, it's about showing how you can be balanced and then off balance. Because of that, you will eventually fall and plop onto the cube, the chair, whatever you have. And then you add the chest to it. Then you're going to have some Drago overlap and an impact. So the root stops, chest goes down and then you attach the head to it. Then you're going to start to have some like a pendulum style thing where you want to go beyond bouncing ball pendulum, but you want to apply that to a human. Again, I'm taking an arm. So it's kind of like a really simplified mechanics rig in a way. I'm using the bony rig. I'll put that link in the description because it's a nice simplified FK style spine set up, which is easier than if you go into IK's, you know, spliny controllers where it gets very translated where you don't really have that nice FK style overlap and just the easier chain style animation. Now, what's the test aspect of it? Well, this is there to see that you understand those principles and then you can do all of this. Let's say within a day. This really shouldn't take you longer than a day. By day, I mean like eight hours, like eight, nine hour work day, I guess. And if you don't have that time, then you would split it up into two, maybe a weekend, right? But it really shouldn't take longer than that. And I say it shouldn't if you want to go into advanced character animation, lip sync performance and acting where you don't really want to be bogged down by the mechanics aspect of it. You just want to concentrate on performance and acting. So if you can't do this over the weekend, that's fine too. That means that you're just at a different level and you got to practice this. It might take you a couple of weeks. It might take you a month or two. That's solely fine, but then you need to recognize where you're at on the staircase of skill sets and don't skip some of those steps and go straight to lip sync and facial performance and stuff like that. But enough of the theory. I want to put in now the demo and I hope it all makes sense. This was for the class, but let me know in the comments. If anything was not clear, I can always elaborate, but let's get into this. All right. So here for the sit down, I'm going to use the ultimate bony rig. The cool thing about this one that you can hide, hide and hide more stuff. So what I'm going to do, I want to keep this on here, but I do want to hide it and show you that what you don't want to do to make this shot a bit longer. You don't want to do where the root just goes and sit. And let's say we're sitting around, I don't know, like somewhere here where things just kind of move down in a linear way. A, you want to take your curve and you want to flatten this so that it starts slow and goes down, but you're still going to move in an arc. So as it goes back, it's going to be more like this where we go further back a bit and then it will go down and then you can go down maybe to here, pause a little bit and then go down. I'm going to spline this back and down so you can see how fast this is and how much more time we need. Then the shot, you're going back and even here you're going to have to have your character lean forward. That comes later. But you're going to have this and maybe you're going to be a bit more like that and then sit down and then this will be a bit faster and maybe even just a bit more forward to bring back here, maybe a bit higher there. Then we go back and we go maybe a bit more in an arc and then here and it will probably hold this over three frames so one, two, three, a bit more like this here. So I want this frame to be here somewhere like this and what you want to do is translate. You want to give this a bit of a pause and you can spline this, make sure it's not broken and then it sits down and the other one I'm not super concerned about, it's mostly the TY like that. It's a bit sharp so you can give this one more frame sit like that and then at the end I'll give this one more frame down just to cushion it a little bit so we have a bit of a soft. It doesn't feel like it's rock on rock, just a little bit. It's not too bad but you can always do the visualize, create motion trail then you can see here it's still fairly flat I would still go up a bit more, a bit more like that. So here, it's not too bad, spline this like that and I want to hold this a bit longer so I want to extend that moment of that sit down so you can always set a key here, set a key here, I'm going to delete that one in the middle, grab all of this out and then make sure that we have still a nice nice flowy arc here so we're going to slowly sit down and then here we're going to start to slow down a bit then we're going to hold this a bit longer and then we're going to sit down that should be okay I do want to spline all this here it's going to sit like that go back and you have to lean forward a lot in order to be balanced so probably hold this here so where my curve and y is here and here I'm going to hold that as well I don't want him to continue to move backwards too much and even at the end not too much so what we have now is kind of a more like that take the everything off here Paulie's there you go so it slowly starts to go back and down kind of like that at least this works roughly here now I'm going to bring back the body and again I don't care about those arms so now what I'm going to do is you can do this with the route as well let's see if I can show it by moving everything I'm just curious how it works it's not too bad let's try it technically I would do everything with the spine let's just do it like this I'm gonna take the spine and the head like both neck control is here so as we go down when we sit that's your impact it would be somewhere around here but I want that neck to be a bit higher like this characters less to kind of look forward okay so we're going from this to this and then on that impact we're going down needs to go down and then we go back I don't know yet about the timing I'm exaggerating obviously with the pose I'm just dragging everything back forward a bit and then straighten all these just in case now in terms of the pose when it goes all the way back I would reduce this so it's maybe everything will go back this far and then we're going to go forward this far and then we're gonna do this okay now when you sit down impact back and like this so you're gonna take all of this and I'm gonna spline the rest almost I'm gonna flatten that last one I want to ease in right so that your curves look like this a linear here because that impact bam on that route is going to just continue with that chest going forward but again this is everything is supposed to pose that's what a lot of you have where it's down up forward and then that's it it goes forward a lot I will reduce this for sure and you can maybe go even a bit further but this is just for simplicity sake now what you can do I want specifically the head and neck to drag and be delayed so when this goes down just like with the pendulum this will continue and take this and the latest by 1 2 3 4 let's see so you go down barely you can barely see this even if I would delay this more it will be too much what you're gonna have to do is delay this and then really push the pose so we're going down and as this goes back we're gonna push that neck down as it goes back here you're gonna push this further back that's not too bad here so now it's already somewhat there what you have to understand though is that when the root hits this and the body goes down the head has to drag that's the main idea drag spline this so you have that delay here and this somewhat works but the poses are dramatically over exaggerated so I don't want to go this low you can still have a delay and right when you can see here when the chest stops going forward which is around here you want the head to continue a bit more that's when you have to go in there by hand and move that head forward probably can delete these now spline these so that you have drag and as the chest see that as the chest stops and goes back the head continues to go forward and back and as we go up we can delay this I can manually go in there and drag that head same thing here we're still dragging and then as the chest stops the head goes back again this is exaggerated so you're gonna start reducing this a bit this will still drag maybe a bit much and then as we come to a stop on that chest that's when the head will continue to go down it's not that bad let's spline this and sit there you go it's really super exaggerated and really not realistic whatsoever but that's okay and you can still take that beginning as we go back we want to be a bit more balanced right that root is already pretty far back so we're gonna start bending forward a lot more even here you're gonna have to make sure that there's a balance and then we can come back a bit you can spline this you want to make sure that the head is not on naturally looking down it would still be somewhat like this so trying to look up and then we have this I'm gonna spline this as well and then we have that and then you can push just a top joint a bit more so that on something like this could just be just that and then we're like this this is fairly imbalanced so I'm gonna take this translate what if I go actually fairly forward and at the end that's the sit your feet forward lean forward bam and that's it so you can see that we're leaning forward a bit we're still fairly balanced this we are pushing it with the off balance but the head is still pretty far in front of the feet and then we stop down and once that root stops chest goes forward as it goes forward the head drags as the chest stops and continues and now starts to go back the head goes forward and drags and then we have like a springy it's almost like that pendulum that we saw doing that you can go further and you can take the the yeah what's it called the pelvis and have it slightly rotated like that so we can have a little bit of a change there home and as it goes forward it would pull that a bit probably stay here to get something in there you can spline this flatten it here this is again very rough but even this roughness to me is enough if you have it like this it would be great it's all that I'm trying to have you understand that the chest and the head are separate and how they go up and how they drag you can again completely exaggerate this if you want if you're going to go down like this so that maybe the neck here the lower neck even has more of a drag and then going back and straightens and then we compensate with this not going as far just it's still somewhat realistic like that you can see how far that lower neck goes that's okay too I wouldn't go crazy and have like a massive massive compression here that's also a few of you have because then you can see how quickly this goes back and forth right quick quick and then it just it just doesn't it's already so exaggerated but it makes it even less real just give this enough of a bouncy you can do this leaning forward using the root as well if you want just to give that what's it called that hip rotation something in there yeah yeah something here and then always I mean you know the character won't be straight there so you have to go here but I I don't always do this because now I have to have rotation on the spine and the root to bring this out that makes sense right if I'm looking at the root here it goes forward but now I'm having root rotation in here not this one this one plus the spine I don't know now I'm getting to me it gets a bit complicated I can see how the spine and the root here are fighting I personally would stay away from that and just look at what you can do with the pelvis if you're doing this just add that roundness in the pelvis I'm gonna take this out round it a bit more if you want and then at the end it does you know it does other things if you want to straighten it a bit more and then give this a bit more feel to it like that flatten this spline that rest I prefer to add squishiness and just move into that lower section but you got to be careful that it doesn't become too squishy and moving around I can already see parts of the legs here see how this line on that thigh moves back but then it keeps it moving a bit I'll be careful stuff like this but generally this is your sit down and again you can take all of this I'm gonna grab even this I'm gonna zero this out delete all animation just grab this and let's say just the top of the head pose here is a pose then we go down and then we go back we go forward and then back on that impact I want that to be linear because I want to feel that sun impact here this can be splined out the rest can be flat actually don't want any of this right now in the hips so we are sitting down boom boom boom that's the idea at the beginning then I want to make sure that we are still leaning forward right that would be to me the next step you lean forward boom but then that means you're gonna have to push that a bit more and you come back and do this and then you just counter the head a bit you still want that head to be not too crazy in terms of how far we go right now I can take that head curve and again delayed is by one two three four and you're gonna have a little bit of drag overlap it's really minimal it really all comes down to you setting more keys and pushing the pose so on that impact you're gonna have to manually delay that head so that it's this and then as it changes here it's gonna drag more if I spline this we have this so we can go up maybe a bit lower here bit higher here so the head has drag drag goes back and it's not aligned with the spine it's dragging it's delayed spline this and then here as the spine goes back and returns the head is going to drag so I'm gonna set this few frames later delete this spline this and then it's okay and sit like that I know sometimes you could go well what if I take all of these and do like the pendulum one two three and then just take this one two three that doesn't quite work then you get a very very wobbly spine the head keys don't work then we're getting back into what some of you have where it gets very pose to pose right where we're hitting this you counter the head but then you ease everything in and then the spine goes back and the head goes back but what need to do is the head needs to continue to go forward as the spine stops this is why I would not do that full delay where you take the curves and just you know offset offset offset you have to really think in terms of posing again that's the idea of your sit down and what helps is just to also act it out so this is not gonna look realistic and feel realistic but I'm gonna do this and you can do this in a slow fashion to really think about how things move with a couple bounces really act it out and see how this feels even if you don't do the initial sit down you you're already sitting but you're going forward here you can going forward with the chest while the head goes up then while the chest reverses and goes back the head continues to go down and that's where the overlap and then the drag comes in and so on this is so exaggerated but you got acted out like this so that you can feel what those actions are and then all you have to do is something like this all right there you have it I hope that was clear like I said before in the intro what I'm gonna do is one of the next clip is going to be a fundamentals of body mechanics basically what you need to pay attention to not just on this but in general what are the typical pitfalls and what are kind of it's kind of a checklist of what you need to know and pay attention to when you get into bottom mechanics just because body mechanics issues show up all the time in every class every students I dealt with a long time it took me a while till it clicked it's just something that's completely normal to go through and to learn and to process so I don't make that easy I'm gonna make a list and some demos and hopefully that will be maybe next week maybe in two weeks but that's something that's gonna come up fairly fairly soon again I hope that was helpful and if it was maybe you want to subscribe to not miss any of those it helps my channel go you know like the YouTube page which I skipped at the beginning but here I am and also if you want me to help you with your shots you know I have workshops you can set up at any time so I can go through stuff like this you can talk about this I can do demos for you you can show me your shots I can critique them it's the usual workshop detailed stuff again link in the description below information and that's it from me if you're still watching as always thank you for your patience I appreciate you're still here and hopefully I'll see you in the next upload