Original subtitles

- Before we jump into the next chapter,

there is a couple of more poses I'd like to show you.

The first one is a katana pose

and we are going to use the double-handed sword to do it.

The second pose is going to be a flying knee.

For those two poses, I will go through

the analysis of the reference,

and then I will give you some hints on how to improve them.

As usual, the first thing you need to do is

to identify the line of action in your character.

Since the character has been swinging to his left,

there is big probabilities that he was pushing

with his right leg.

We will also be able to identify another line of action

going through the left leg.

It's interesting to see all those two lines

form a triangular shape.

So this is something we will have to try to match

in our pose.

From there as usual,

I'm drawing some lines on the character

to see the orientation of the face,

the orientation of the torso, check the hips position

and outline some of the interesting shapes.

Going to use anatomical part as point of reference,

like the clavicles and the pecs

to figure out the chest orientation

or the eyes to figure out the head orientation.

For this pose,

I advise you to switch to inverse kinematics

for the arm controllers,

powering the weapon to the left hand.

From there, offset, a bit, the weapon

so that there is enough room for the right hand

on the handle.

Then, as usual,

try to first match the right position for the torso root.

In this case,

it is slightly twisted toward the left arm of the character.

It is slightly leaning forward

and it is tilting toward the right arm of the character.

Once your torso root is roughly posed,

you should pose the feet.

First, check out the orientation of the feet,

and then double check that your center of gravity is

currently aligned with those feet,

so that your character is balanced.

Finally, carefully watch the knees orientation

and don't forget to use the pole targets

to rectify the leg's shape.

You will be able to see the whole posing process

in a slow-paced time-lapse in the next video.

When posing the arms,

double check the position of the elbows

and the position of the hands.

Watch for the angles made by the elbows

and carefully watch for hands orientation.

Then, use the shoulder controller to reach those poses.

When working on the hands,

don't forget to use the pan bone controller

and try to draw a nice curling shape of the finger.

Make sure that your hand doesn't look like a box.

Finally, don't forget that you can use

the sword controller to tweak

the sword orientation and position.

To push this pose,

you have to increase its directionality.

Since the center of gravity is pushed to the right,

I will just push it even more.

And as the character is slightly leaning to the left,

I will make him lean even more.

And since there is quite a lot of spine twisting

engaged into this pose,

I will make the body twist even more.

The final touch was to fix some issues

regarding the initial pose.

On the initial pose,

the sword doesn't tread well

because it's overlapping with the body.

So while my first concern was to make the character

look more dynamic,

I've also made sure that the sword better reads

on the pushed pose.

For this new pose, as usual,

I'm looking for the line of action,

and since the character just jumped,

it's pretty easy to find it.

While the line of action is currently

supporting the motion of the character,

remember that we are here to translate

the motivation of the character.

And his purpose is currently to hit his opponent

as hard as possible with his knee.

So when we are going to push this pose,

instead of focusing on the line of action,

I will focus on the directionality of the knee

and make sure that the whole pose of the character

supports this idea.

Once I was able to match the reference pose,

I've pushed the pose of my character

so that we do feel the directionality of the knee.

And it's to make your whole character becoming a hero

pointing at the target.

I've shortened the angle of the left knee

so that it looks more pointy,

but I rotated the torso backward so that it's more aligned

with the directionality of the knee.

And finally, I make sure that both arms

are supporting the current pose

and don't forget to support the pose, even in the finger.

Make sure that the hands read well and make the fingers

track toward their previous position in the movement.

But you should also pose the toes of the character.

Double check the orientation of the feet.

Basically check each part of your character,

rotate around the pose and make sure that each features of

the body are supporting the current pose

and make sure that the current pose

does translate or communicate the will of the character.

This is the mindset you need to have

whenever you are creating a pose,

whether it's an action pose like this one or an acting pose.

If your character is feeling fear, for example,

how should his hand be posed to translate the fear?

What kind of shape should his body make?

How do I pose the shoulder, how do I pose the head?

What kind of shape do I do with the eyes?

So again,

whenever you are building the pose, ask yourself

what it communicates and if it does it well.

And if each part of the character currently communicates

the same idea.

Use reference to get a good quality of pose

and a good believability,

push the pose to better communicate the idea

and connect with your audience,

whether it's for gameplay animation or film animation.

This is the end of this video.

The next video will be the time-lapses

of the two different poses we've just studied.

And I will see you in the next chapter.