What If…? S02 E01 - What if… Nebula Joined the Nova Corps?

BRIeF…

Probably one of my favourite episodes to animation as I did not have to do any hair or cape sim. But on a serious note, this was an interesting change of pace compared to the others episodes I’ve worked on as the client wanted this episode to have more static poses, meaning no breathing or blinking. Does not look too bad in the playblast but once rendered…its kinda shows.

What worked?

We were able to get nebula’s personality and expression down pretty early into animating her. She is basically like carter but more in the frowned expression. This was also around that time where I recorded reference to help me animate some crowds in the background such as the nova corps workers and some people chatting in the background of the casnio.

What didn’t worked?

I mostly had issue when it came to shots that regarded body mechanics, specifically weight shifting. An example would be one of the characters talks then does a turn and walks away, even when I recorded references and in the 3D space of the shot to looks correct, the notes I get back are its too robotic or does not look natural. I was unable to figure out why this shot was not getting approved and would alter it to make it less robotic by making slight changes on some parts of the animation. It ended up me having to give the shot to another animator.

What to improve?

If I get a shot that is cleanly not getting approved or getting the robotic note, I would end up deleting the entire section of that animation and start from scratch, it's better to start on a clean slate and work on it twice as fast then only doing small increments and still getting no changes.