Research - Meet the Engineer

For the song and dance assignment, I've decided to go with the 'Wonkey Donkey', clip, now this is going to require a character playing a guitar. The above film is one of many promo trailers for Valves 'Team Fortress 2' video game, now all these trailers are excellent, Valve have some of the best character animators in the business working for them at the moment. This trailer features so e gorgeous guitar playing. Not so much the tune, but the animation is beautiful, so fluid. Natural, yet in-keeping with the high stylisation of the character. One of my weaknesses when it comes to my own animation, is proper offsets and overlap. There's something about it I just haven't quite mastered yet. I seem to either use way too much, or not enough. I can learn a lot for this clip. Watch the engineers hand as he strums. The use of offsets and overlapping action, particularly on his thumb, give his hand a very lose, fluid feel, yet not so lose that it just flops about everywhere, there's still a little bit of tension there.