Head Turn

 

For the process of animating a head turn, I chose to use one of my original characters. Luckily, the process of animating the head to move smoothly and in a convincing arc wasn't too difficult. Instead, the real challenge was in getting everything else to follow the head precisely!

The first major hurdle came with the body. Outside of the arm lines, I had a difficult time trying to understand the way that the body and especially the neck would twist over the course of the animation. After animating the body and face, I was faced with an even greater challenge: the hair. I broke it down into several basic shapes: one for the bangs, two for the side partings, and one for the ponytail. Though it definitely made the process of adding the hair in afterwards easier, it was still rather time-consuming. The way that the bangs parted in particular forced me to answer questions about the design of my character on the spot in order to make sure that the hair stayed connected and consistent.

Though I wouldn't call it a "difficult" final step, cleaning up all the layers one frame at a time in order to make sure nothing overlapped incorrectly and erasing all the guiding lines I previously used was also a very intricate process. This was definitely the most intensive assignment of the class by far, and one that I wish I had a little more time to work with. However, I'm happy with the final result nonetheless. It's really rewarding to be able to see the final project come to life at the very end after hours of work.