Animation planning for "Song & dance"-task.

I have been working on planning for the "song & dance"-task since my last post.
I started the process with some additional research, just to get the mood and feel of the main character and the way I want to present the performance. I found some images of various artists on stage and put them together sort of like a mood-board, but mainly for the character itself.

Here's the image:



I then started working on the character-profile for my character. His name is "Johnny Singswell", the name is a bit ridicioulus I know. But I think it's fun to be a bit silly with the names and since I am the one creating the character, I like to have some fun while doing it.
I included his inner power centre along with the lyrics from the sound clip I chose; "Feelin' good".
Here is Johnny's character-profile:




I also watched through the reference-video, over and over.. I do this so I can pick out the key poses and take notes of details I want to include in the piece. I usually sketch these down by hand as character-poses to use as a guide when I start blocking.

Here is some rough sketches of some of the poses in the reference-video:




But, I'm never satisfied with the look of these sketches so I like to do them over again in photoshop. It's just more pleasant to look at the sketches when they have better quality and is drawn digitally on a plain white surface. I used a lot of time to make this, but I think it's worth it since I use it both as a pose-sheet and a storyboard for the animation. The notes I took in the rough sketches are included, and also a rough outline of timing for some of the more important poses in the piece.

Here is the storyboard/pose-sheet for the task:



I have also started to model the scene, it's really basic so haven't used too much time on it.
I have also imported the rig and changed some of the textures to make him fit the profile better. I think I am going to give the Max rig a go this time. It's just more appealing to look at than the dee-rig I have been using up till now. And also for this task my character is supposed to be a very charming guy, so I think this is the best solution for this one.
I am familiar with the rig so I know it has some issues with gimbals that might make the elbows pop and snap, so I need to keep extra attention to this when I start putting in my breakdowns and inbetweens.

I guess that's one of the the downsides of animating in 3ds MAX
- There isn't a lot of good free-rigs to choose from.

Anyway, back to work!