This week I began working on the final animation for my learning project! I have decided to animate my character model doing one of the many viral dances found on TikTok. This is no small task! Therefor, I will have to continue working on it next week, and hopefully complete a finished video for the end of our class. For reference, the walking animation loop I created last week was one second long and had 32 frames, while the dance I have chosen to animate as a final project will require just over 600 frames!

So, what is the dance I have chosen? I’m glad you asked! I chose to animate the dance created by TikTok user @jessqualter for the song “Jiggle Jiggle” – Note: I have seen multiple titles for the song but this is what is listed on the original TikTok video. I chose this dance for a few reasons. First, it went viral only in the last few months, which I feel makes it a more relevant choice than other dances. Second, the dance has many moves that are repeated/mirrored. This means that, for animating, I can save time by copying and pasting!

Naturally, I used TikTok this week in order to search for and select the dance I wanted to animate. Because I was already on the platform, I decided to see if I could find any resources for learning animation in Blender. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found! Because of the video length limitations of TikTok, I do not believe it is a platform that lends itself well to tutorials for beginners. However, I was able to find multiple videos that share other websites and tools to use for animation. The first example was this video which shows a website you can use to create a custom character and download it into Blender fully rigged and ready to animate. Another video shows a website where, after creating your own character model, you can upload it to the website and the website will create animations for you, which you can then download and import back into Blender!

The following video shows the progress I made this week, I have completed approximately 1/3 of the total frames I will need to animate.

My hope is to have the dance completed for my final learning Project post next week, with it, I will hopefully have time to include a video that walks through the animation process and my thoughts while I was working on it, including the portions I animated this week.

Self Reflection:

I think I had a good start to animating the dance this week though I am nervous about whether I will finish next week or not. One of the things I have picked up on while working is that, even though I am able to copy and mirror dance moves that are repeated, I need to go in and make some adjustments to each one. If they remain exact copies, I find the moves end up looking robotic.

Resources Evaluation:

I was pleasantly surprised with what I was able to find on TikTok this week. As I mentioned, the video length limitation means the platform is not suited for complicated step-by-step tutorials with explanations for beginners. However, there is a decent number of creators sharing what seem to be incredibly useful tools. Even though these tools were not applicable to my project this week, they are certainly tools that I would like to explore using in the future.

Plans for Next Week:

• Finish dance animation.
• Edit and post video explaining and showcasing animation process.