This is the product of eleven hours straight of animating. It would have taken less time, had I realized sooner that I could simply add a parent constraint on the leftmost pole and hand rather than attempting to add countless unnecessary keyframes to keep a realistic grip as the top half of the body moves around.
After a very long work day, I am unable to do much reflection, but I did learn quite a lot about how shave and a haircut works as well as how to animate a shave rig / effectively hide hairs without Maya crashing.
I had a lot of fun getting the lighting just right, as always, and my excitement was indescribable when I rendered the first test frame of what I considered to be an adequate lighting setup + hair shader combination.
I labeled this as my first polish because I do believe I need to smooth it out a bit more, in particular the jolting arm motion when he steps forward to catch his balance. It also seems to me that the right arm drifts too far behind him after the first drop from the pole, however, I’ve been attempting to rectify this only to be frustrated with the fact that placing it any farther out reveals the model in the original footage.
I have an idea to add in falling snow that only falls around Santa, and, if I can swing it, have it collect upon the seats in the original background plate. That would take this shot from good to great.