Character Motion and Interim States

I've been looking at some samples of my character animation over the past few days. I've figured this much out about myself. When I see a particular motion in my head, I can make it look good. Really good, with weight distribution and post-action movements. The trouble is the 'empty' time between defined, purposeful movements.

Some of my characters' body parts drift idly from the end of one pose to the beginning of the next, but the reality of the situation is that there never is space between poses. Every pose juts up against another one.

"Purposeful" movement is what I call any motion that the character is thinking about doing: that they have a purpose in mind for executing that motion. I need to redefine my thoughts. When I raise my arm to put a book on the shelf, and then walk away, there's a moment between my hand leaving the shelf and transitioning into the swinging motion of the walk cycle that can speak volumes about the character's state of mind.

From now on, I'll be focusing on these 'inbetween' motions. They should reflect a body's tendency toward a particular emotion or type of pose. If the character is nervous, they should hold in an unsure position. If a character is looking at something, his entire body needs to reflect that attention, not just the eyes and hands, but the neck, shoulders, feet, and stance.

I considered building a character rig that has current emotional states in sliders, and they would control a character's tendency to animate back to a particular pose, but when you start automating, it's difficult to achieve that impressionistic 'now' feeling of the motion.

And so I'll end with the thought that I need to make a new animation that really show this kind of thing, and put them in my reel. I can see it so plainly now, it's time to put my models where my mouth is.