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Concept art for Pigeon Pal, drawn by brother Andrew Laitinen. You can see some of his work here.
I had to edit the concepts to fix proportions and make the rigging process easier. Note the straightening of the legs for example.
The reference footage. In order to give the animation some space for edits the footage does not start until 10 seconds in.
After several takes, the video is composited together to use the very best motions from the various shots.
The audio was recorded separately, then edited into the footage piece by piece to get the timing between the speech and the motion down right. Thus, the dialog appears to not be in sync with the reference footage.
Blocking pass. The character's motion is keyed roughly every 3-5 frames. While tedious at first, this ultimately leads to an easier, better-looking smooth pass in the end. Facial animation was put off until the second half of the animation pipeline.
The final portion of the blocking pass. Here you can actually see the rig in action. I had put a ghosting effect on the feet curves so I could get an idea of where the feet are while they're in motion, hence all the blue rectangles.
The very first spline pass. I basically had just switched all the tangents from stepped to clamped. While not perfect, the blocking pass certainly helped in making the transition easier.
Simulation test on the gadgets that rest on the table.
The objects come in two parts: the textured, hi poly models that are warp deformed onto low-poly ncloth objects. The ncloth is simulated like concrete to prevent deformation of the objects.
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