Animating the Woman
Once the characters and environment were ready, I moved on to animation blockouts. I began by recording my own reference videos from both front and camera views so I could study realistic movement and timing. This was especially helpful for the woman, since her hands and gestures would be interacting with holograms and controls throughout the scene.
I blocked out the key poses on 4s to establish the rhythm of the action. I wanted her movement to show that she had been working for a while before the mech goes into override, so the tension would build naturally instead of appearing suddenly. By the end of the blockout, all the key poses were placed, and the overall pacing of the sequence was set.
While animating, I encountered a major issue: the woman’s rig started deforming a lot when pushed into stronger poses. This slowed down the animation process significantly because even slightly exaggerated movements caused her mesh to bend or collapse unnaturally. Her elbows and knees wouldn’t bend the way I needed, which limited the expressiveness of the body poses.
The deformation problems were even worse in the face. I couldn’t create exaggerated facial expressions at all — whenever I tried making her smile more or raise features for emphasis, the face would distort and parts of it would sink inside the mesh. This made it difficult to convey subtle emotional beats without breaking the model.
Animating the Mech
Animating the mech ended up being one of the most time-consuming parts of the blockout because I had to find a balance between mechanical weight and readable movement. To build a foundation, I loosely followed a human walk-cycle structure — mainly the up-and-down motion — because it helped keep the movement clear and helped me plan steps, spacing, and timing. But I still needed the mech to feel engineered, not human.
To make it feel heavier, I added small jerks and stops in the movement, as if each step required force to land and force to lift again. I didn’t want it to glide too smoothly, because that made it look floaty, but if it was too stiff, it looked locked and unrealistic. I spent a lot of time adjusting the hips, knees, and torso rotations so the weight felt like it was shifting through actual metal parts.
Another challenge was making sure the joints looked like they were rotating from the correct mechanical points. Since the mech had so many rigid parts, every pivot needed to feel like it was actually happening from a hinge or connection, not from a flexible limb. This meant constantly checking angles, making sure no part overlapped awkwardly, and adjusting the rotations so the movement felt like something a real machine could do.
Getting the footsteps right took several tries. If the mech stepped too softly, the whole thing felt weightless. If it stepped too sharply, the motion snapped in a way that didn’t match the rest of the body. I kept reworking the spacing to find something that felt believable enough without overcomplicating the blockout. It isn’t perfect and I know I could improve it, but the blockout helped me establish the general motion, timing, and attitude of the mech.