This is where the scene is at at the moment. This is my first pass on the main action. The overall timing is also close to being set, but there will be some tweeking once I start working in the poses and doind my secondary actions.

I know that there's a gab between my last post to this one, but I will be filling that out soon with thoughts and explanations sometime soon.

I have been working hard, constantly interrupting myself from falling back into old bad habbits. This is why I haven't been posting. I wanted to get to a stage where I feel the scene is on the path I want it to, before I could turn my thoughts elsewhere.

This is my planning for the animation bewteen golden pose 7 to 8.

Further explanation in the posts above(those are incoming), just thought it'd be fun to show the entire sheet.

This is what it looks like after a forty minutes long chat about breakdowns with animator Meelis Arulep. Meelis was teaching the second year students and I was lucky enough to get some time with him at my workspace.

I wanted to hear about his aproach to a scene once he has his keys down and is about to start doing the breakdowns. Timing is a factor one cannot ignore in this conversation, so we also got into timecharts and how he makes best use of those.

The breakdown is the drawing that defines the arc of the respective motion and thereby makes an action unique to a character. This is how I would describe the breakdown. After talking to Meelis there were a few other aspects thrown into the equation.

I have been thinking a lot in arcs when doing my breakdowns, and not as much in shape. Change of shape from keypose to keypose, yes, but to use the breakdown as a third unique shape is something I look forward to try out.

Today I will start doing breakdowns for my scene and I am very eager to see what the study will result in.

A big thank you to Meelis for taking the time to answer some of my questions. I'll end with a quote that I plan to follow : "Animate! You don't have to prove to anyone that you can draw! Animate man...!" Meelis Arulep 20/11-08

I finally got the Golden Poses (storytelling Keys) in the scene as I wanted them. There will still be some tweeking to maintain volume and design, but this is a solid base, I feel. I have tried to create as much space as possible bewteen the poses, while keeping it in the subtle end of the scale that is, to be be able to really make the breakdown have a say and also to put emphasis on the changes in the poses. I have been and will be looking at a lot of Fred Moore (posing especially) and Milt Kahl (animation) for this scene.

One of the mainpoints with this exercise is to explore the breakdown as much as possible and get a better understanding of its function in a string of pictures. How to make that breakdown stand out and define character. I am going to do three to four diferent breakdowns for each set of keys and hopefully it will pay off in some cool resuslts.

So, with a bit of time spend on nailing the last few keys with a black line I should be ready to start doing loads of breakdowns.

These are the thumbnails I did for the planning of the scene. They were done fairly fast and with most thought put into the man. The waitress will be posed a little diferently in the actual scene. When I planned for this scene I tried to make room for change in the characters poses. I thought about directional change as well as up and down especially.

I use thumbnailing to get an overview of the scene and to start getting into the timing of the scene, only in broad strokes yet though.