Alien bird WS animation update (Patreon)

I want to have the character motion finished and to have gotten a good chunk of the fluids done on this this month- I've been applying a lot of what I've learned with squash/stretch for characters in this one and it's helped with making the characters seem less like 3d dolls and more like things made of meat!

It'd be a lot more difficult to add squash and stretch to a rig using bones if the rig wasn't made with that in mind from the beginning (which... none of mine are). However, lattices are good alternative because they transform vertices on-top of bone deformation (and also regardless of weights, the lattice would be great for things like the junk which I'm going to test out later)

Lattices are perfect for adding squash/stretch to a head, especially a longer head! It deforms everything very nicely and evenly, no eyeballs clipping through the head or teeth clipping through the jaw... it's very nice.

Here's a youtube video demo'ing the squash stretch on the bird.

https://youtu.be/cOj8xPdtWX4

I'm also attaching the animation so far, some parts I've touched up and are almost done, some I haven't gotten to, some are in between that, there's one part that I'm scrapping all the body animation on the bird and redoing (this time with reference) because it just wasn't looking great (that part has "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" on it in the animation) (I also attached just the bit where the alien says "Nut? Is that good?" because I love how that turned out!)

I kind of though I knew how to approach squash/stretch on bones in the rig but I'm rethinking a lot of it. I'd like to have the two dragons going at it animation be very high quality and adding in squash/stretch to the alien and bird helps me know where lattices are a good fit (such as head and torso) and where the squash and stretch should be built into the rig (like the arms and legs). I might have to scrap some of the animation that I already did on that if I end up having to break the rig to add squash/stretch stuff but maybe not (and it's not a *ton* of work that would be lost)

Also I was watching a couple clips of movies with great animation to study it and ever since I first saw this scene, I've been fascinated by it. I go back to it all the time. It's the dance scene from Ferdinand. The deformation and animation on these characters is so good.

https://youtu.be/92fh6lkURaI

Of course this isn't the pinnacle of animation or anything but I love the personality the animators were able to express with these characters. And it is extremely well animated. The people behind the rigs of these characters must be insane, like to have a 4 legged character dance and move like this it's wild. It's stuff I deeply admire. Plus, look at this position!

It's not the most impressive thing about that scene but it is certainly one of the most interesting from a furry stand point.

Anyway, I think I'm beginning to figure out some important stuff with how to attempt taking my animation out of the realm of "amateur" and the realm of "done by an recent college grad intern at pixar at something"