Clara is the hyper-realistic counterpart to Dana. Beginning work on Clara was cathartic, because I finally got to see the pieces of my FMP idea coming together. It’s incredible to already be able to compare and contrast the two animation styles and imagine the finished product, it’s really given me the motivation to push through with it after the frustration that was getting stuck on the cowboy WIP.
The Clara rig itself has not given me technical trouble, other than some irritating joint weights I’ve had to repaint and strange teeth duplicates that were constrained incorrectly. Thanks to my new (yet still quite young) experience in rigging, I was able to identify and solve these issues on my own pretty swiftly.
The only strangeness in animating the Clara rig comes from the fact that I’ve now spent over a month going into work and putting my energy into creating the most cartoonish, rubbery, absurd and zany work that I can. Putting myself in the mind of a child playing a video game with a very short attention span and a juvenile sense of humor. This has translated well for Dana, but as I work on Clara, I find myself wondering continually whether my animation is “enough”. It feels like almost nothing. A small, subtle hip movement every 50 frames. Very precise neck angle. Dana feels like opening a sandbox and just seeing what I can create, Clara feels like tracing an outline carefully.
That said, I am proud of my Clara work, and it’s fun to compare them.
As it stands right now, I’d have to say I personally prefer the cartoonish animation style, but this may be a premature call. I haven’t completed a finished render for any project to compare the two, and that realistic cowboy does have a lot of intrigue.
Anyway, I plan to have a cartoon-realistic shot for a total of 3 pairings, each with their own tracked shot. If worst comes to worst and I can only do 2 pairings, I’ll still have 4 tracked shots and 4 animations, which isn’t bad. I do need to make sure I have time to get my thesis done as well, which has kind of been placed on the back burner for the time being, as I know that I can write quickly and effectively even in a time crunch while I simply cannot cut corners or “just work faster” on animation in any way shape or form without taking huge sacrifices.