For my 3rd animation I wanted to do a wave. I thought this would be a good choice as it would allow me to think about the arcs principle in animation. Below is the timeline and my keyframes that I used for this animation.
To start the animation I first started by keyframing the main parts of the arm. I used a few keyframes to get the arm up to the position I wanted it to start waving at and get the hand to be rotated naturally into the correct place. Once I had this part down I made the arm wave from right to left a few times in arcing motions to make it look smooth and natural. I rotated the controller to make the hand match the angle and added in these keyframes too. Once the arm had waved a few times i used the remaining frames on the timeline to set the arm going back down to the body so that the motion would finish in the same place the animation started.
Once I had the arm completed for the character I wanted to exaggerate the motion a bit. I decided to do this by moving other elements of the body. I decided to move the torso and the head to tilt and sway with the motion and made sure to move the other arm that wasn’t waving so it looked natural. I turned and tilted the torso of the character to make the wave motion look like it had some force behind it and to exaggerate the movement. I also then added some keyframes for the head to make it tilt and look like the character was nodding at the person he was waving at. This looks smooth and I think shows some of the skills I learnt in my first and second animations as I am a beginner.
