So the centre of gravity, as you’ll all remember from school, is the average position of weight distribution in an object or character. Just before we start though, I’ll be using Maya, but obviously the same techniques can easily be transferred to the 3D package of your choice. However, that’s simply the way I have approached the exercise, and it’s by no means the only way to skin this particular cat, so please find your own preferred way. Sorry to disappoint but we won’t be seeing too much of the Graph Editor this month as by the end of the animation I’ll have keyed in poses every 2-4 frames in order to help transitions from pose to pose and to add subtle detail, which the computer by itself cannot achieve. After that it’ll be time to block out the key poses.

We’ll then – as ever – move on to the essential step of gathering and analysing good reference. So firstly we’ll consider the physics behind what we’re trying to achieve: we’ll look at the centre of gravity of an object and a character and see how the latter shifts during their interplay, and we’ll also revisit Newton’s Third Law of Motion, which states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Maya animation examples