Scarecrow Animation Sample

Spooky Season week 2.

I decided to revisit armatures/rigs and character modeling this time. I learned a lot while making this test animation, but perhaps more importantly I now know specifically what I need to improve on.

In the future I will be more careful when building my character mesh so that it does not pull open at the seams during animation. This issue was the result of how I built the clothes as extensions of a main body. My main mistake was not reconnecting the individual vertexes before joining the shirt/overalls/gloves/boots. I realized this too late as I had already subdivided and applied the solidify modifier to the individual pieces of clothing. This meant that at that stage there were way too many vertexes to connect manually. Now that I recognize that potential issue I can prevent it from occurring in the future.

This is my first attempt creating a rain effect. In retrospect, I realize that the first camera angle creates unnecessary confusion stemming from the fact that I currently have the wind force directing falling rain towards the camera rather than moving more tangentially to the viewer's perspective. The direction made sense in earlier drafts as I was working with different camera angles. More importantly, the motion blur settings in Eevee will need to be adjusted in the future so that the shutter speed creates a more appropriate "tail" behind each raindrop.

The camera movement and bird flight remains way too jerky. I have tried to fix this in the graph editor and timeline but it never seems smooth enough. Perhaps my next project ought to be focused on solving that perennial issue. If anyone has suggestions I would be happy to hear any advice.