Word of Advice

Always never stop two-thirds of the way through your transformation. What the goat?

I've been experimenting with some animal head sculpting, and practicing animating a human expression while a head is changing shape. Place is turning into a ranch. This is just a funny still render from a recent session: funny to me because I yelped when I saw the render, making a sound that probably whatever this part-animal dude would make. I kept it.

I'm imagining overlaying a cartoon smile on his mouth.

I didn't have any other particular goal at the time with this. It started when I saw an example of that pet-peeve TF trope that movies have done, where someone is transforming and their head is bubbling to give you the idea that it's changing, but it's not actually changing. Just bubbling—like they are pumping air behind some prosthetic and make up. And they have kind of a dead expression. You know what I mean? Then they cut to a next stage, where they have now skipped past probably the most interesting part of the animation, because, well, budget.

I see TF animators do this too, and they cut between segments and skip big parts of a TF, when TF is the point. I understand why, though. It's difficult to make things continuous. Again it's that challenge to animate joints and move their position without significant shape and texture distortion, and software really isn't geared for that. That's what I set out to do with my animations, believing that is a big factor for realism. I think the continuity of the TF is more important than rendering realism, but I try my best at both. I have lots to learn still.

(Let me mention for the record that I also cringe when I see grow-shrink-grow-shrink-grow muscles in a muscle growth TF. Why balloons?)

YHAWWW.