As with the sit animation this will be a two week assignment. Similar to the sit, this first week of the project will be spent blocking out your poses. Keep in mind all the key components of posing you have learned: silhouette, line of action, weight, and asymmetry (avoid "twinning").
Last week you took reference and/or made a planning sheet in preparation of your animation signature shot. Use this reference and planning to your advantage as you have done in previous assignments. Make the Nebbish poses as readable and interesting as you can, extracting ideas from your reference/planning. Feel free to exaggerate certain poses as well (using your best judgement), as the Nebbish is a relatively cartoony, silly, and entertaining character and his motion should reflect that.
Though some of you share the same shot assignments, you will each be doing your own individual animation. Think of them as different takes. As you know from taking motion reference, there are many different ways to approach the same actions. Also, to reiterate from last week: Keep in mind that since this is just an exercise much of your motion may not be used in the final film. However, in the end you will have a better understanding of who the Nebbish is and how he moves, in addition to having further honed your animation skills.
You will be animating and playblasting your shot from the cinematic camera angle established in the animatic. For certain movements like walk cycles feel free to animate from front and side views, but make sure the motion looks best from the final cinematic camera - as that is how people would see it in context. You probably will want to reference the set to determine character placement, distance traveled, etc.
This second week of animation signature shots will be very similar to the second week of your sit assignment. You will have recieved feedback during this Thursday's class session. The first step is to apply this feedback to your blocking. Simplify where necessary and make sure the motion properly conveys the intent and emotion of the shot. Also, remember that this assignment is solely about character motion, so focus on that. It is preferable that you turn in a playblast with great looking motion rather than a rendered/lit scene with less thought out animation. If your scene requires the Nebbish to react to another character (for example a fish or a seagull), just use stand-in spheres or still models to establish their position in the scene at certain points in time.
The next step is to add facial expressions. Use the animation you did for the facial expressions assignment as reference, but improve on them where necessary. The main Nebbish rig will have a new head attached to it, so if you've referenced the rig for animation it should automatically update.
The final step will be splining and polishing your motion. Here are some notes about splining from the sit assignment: "Go through your whole animation and set keyframes to spline and then adjust the tangents to create the desired interpolation. You may choose to do this all at once or pose by pose depending on your preference. Keep scrolling through your animation and check to make sure poses don't accidentally overshoot their mark. Make sure that feet don't slide on the ground by setting interpolation type to flat where necessary. Avoid breaking tangents or using linear interpolation which can result in visible pops in the animation - instead you can set extra keyframes on individual channels or controls to create sharp movements."
The selection code from class can be found here.