Lesson learnt

I took a break from animating at one point today and saw some more Keith Lango tutorials, and as I got about midway in the one on detail I realized how much detail I actually had included in my blocking. I had a lot of trouble with this on the song and dance, especially on the face. I realized that the selection-sets I've made for the rig on the face was both mouth and eyes, which means that if I wanted to change an expression, or rather clean up the mess that it had become after moving into spline, I had to go through every key. Because if I moved it the lipsync moved. I found a solution in de-selecting the mouth and then changing the eyes/eyebrows-/lids, but it took so much of my time to fix it.
So back to the point, as I sat and watched the tutorial I just had to see how much was actually keyed, and oh dear; It was almost a key on every other frame..

The solution for this was to delete all the keys that didn't do anything, so Instead of a 60-70++ keys for the facial-expression I ended up with five. I thought I'd leave these in so that it's easier to read what's happening.

I also removed some subtle head tilts, blinks, and so on. These will be added when I have a solid structure, or at least as solid as I manage to make it with my knowledge.

Lesson learnt indeed, thanks Keith!

To update you on the work in progress I have been adding breakdowns all day, back and forth between linear and stepped and it's all moving forwards at least. I do feel the pressure, but I won't move into linear too soon, so I have made two previews to bring along to tomorrows Show and tell, one stepped and one linear - So I can ask Penny for some advice on my next move.

Well, the old eyes are tired and so is the head so that's it for today!