This week, I moved on to the spline stage based on the revised blocking from last week. The process involved adding and removing a large number of frames to adjust the overall timing and rhythm of the animation.

Feedback

During the head-raising motion in the preparation phase, I encountered a common issue with the motion arc — the movement of the character’s nose didn’t follow a proper curve.

In natural motion, the nose should move along a smooth arc, which is determined by the joints function. This makes it important to pay close attention to arc design as early as the blocking stage, to ensure the motion looks natural.

In the calmer phase of the animation, I needed to add more pauses and held poses to maintain a clear rhythm. At the same time, I had to avoid adding unnatural forward-and-back body swaying, which I had previously used to fill space in the overall movement.

At this stage, I encountered a subtle issue — the character’s body stopped rotating too early, which made the movement feel unnatural. The correct approach is to maintain the body’s rotation throughout the entire phase until the action is complete.

This issue emerged throughout almost the entire stage. I made all the body parts move at the same time, without adding any delay between them. Ideally, the end parts, like the head and hands, should move first, followed by the base parts like the neck and arms. This kind of delay is very important for making the motion feel more natural.

In the facial expression part, especially around the mouth, there were still some strange deformations that made the lip movements look unnatural. This area needs further adjustment to improve the overall result.

Reflection

In the first stage of polishing the spline, many issues that were easy to overlook during the blocking stage became more noticeable. Two points stood out as especially important:

• Planning of motion arcs — movements should follow smooth and logical curves.
• Use of delay in specific parts of the body, which helps make the animation feel more natural and believable.