Anim: Cops & Robbers - Process

Here's a process video of my 11 Second Entry & some explanation below
 

 The first clip is my reference. I plan out my camera angle & layout in Maya first, so I can shoot reference that will be close to the angle I'll see in Maya.

12 sec - The next step is blocking. For dialog shots I worked in stepped & block in the major key poses. I study my reference and also use it for very rough timing. This just helps save time, so when I start splinning in the next step the timing isn't super off.

23 sec - The next video I have splinned the beginning. I work in small sections, so I can focus my attention. I don't stay in stepped mode that long, I find it easier to switch to spline & start adding in-betweens there.

35 sec - The fourth video I now have rough inbetweens/clean up on the whole shot. This is technically my final blocking pass.

46 sec - this is my first pass polish. I start tweaking some of the timing, pushing some of the poses & adding more overlap/follow through. I also added the gun twirl in this stage, I felt the ending was lacking a bit and thought this would spice it up

57 sec - this is my second polish pass. I've added in first pass lip sync/worked on the face more. I've also added in some secondary action on the gun, but only in the first half of the shot

1:09 - this is the final polish pass on the guy. I've tweaked more lip sync and fixed anything I saw that felt "off"

1:20 - I added in the girl animation. I animated her in a more straight ahead manner, was in spline from the beginning. I knew I didn't want her to be distracting so I basically just animated reactions to what the guy was doing

1:32 - Final version. Added in a background & rendered it using Maya's Hardware Render Buffer. I definitely recommend it. It's quick and lets you add in motion blur. Basically a beefed up version of a playblast

Anim: Cops & Robbers - Final

Here's the final version I submitted...and I won!!!! woohoo!!!!