Crane Assignment

Over the past week I've been working on my latest assignment, which was to animate a crane picking up a cylinder and placing it on a block. Let me start out by saying that the way to approach a shot is to first block out the key poses, that is, the main storytelling poses, and then refine the shot with in-between poses. This is called blocking. Since this was my first attempt at blocking I didn't actually cover all of the poses and go as in depth as I should have, so when I went to finish the animation in the second half of the week I had a lot more work to do then I would have if I had properly blocked out the shot. So from now on I'll try to do a better job at the blocking phase.



After the blocking I went ahead and constrained the can to the claw. This way the crane actually picks up the can and takes it over to the block. I took my time and tried to make the animation smooth and hopefully interesting. This is what I turned in.



I'm happy with the way it came out, but I'm not finished with it yet. My instructor gave me some tips to clean up the animation and make things a bit more realistic and smooth. However, that's going to have to wait until after my next assignment where I'll animate a ball with one leg! I'll have that up when I'm finished.