After displaying a series of expressions on Leah’s face, I felt it would not be enough when showing a kid’s excitement for ice cream. I needed live reference footage of how a kid would react to the idea of Ice cream and couldn’t find any online. Booking in a camera at the University I used the green screen room to shoot a video of myself as reference.
Part II: She starts jumping up and down and calling her dad to join in on her quest to get the Icecream.
Reference footage shots of myself:
After a couple tries of shooting the reference video, I realised that to get more accurate reference footage, I needed ponytails similar to my rigged character. SO though I felt silly doing this, I understood that this is what being a good animator entails. An animator needs to be an actor first.
I tried to portray a kid’s excitement as much as I could in this reference video. This past year I had been working as a part-time nanny, taking care of kids and their after school activities and feel that this experience has helped me carry this idea out.
Here, My run for the ice cream though excited, may be a little off. I used my tip toes for landing rather than heels like a kid probably would. Will figure that out at a later stage.
Shraddha Mithinti 