After deciding on my idea and modelling the board, I carried out a test to see how easily and successfully I could make the board flip using keyframes and tweening.
Although the board clearly has no wheels and the animation doesn't look realistic or interesting, the point was to use keyframing to flip and spin the board as desired, in which case it was a success.
My primary source of research and reference material was my own footage: I recorded myself performing the tricks so I could animate my character over it.
My primary source of research and reference material was my own footage: I recorded myself performing the tricks so I could animate my character over it.
As you can see the camera I used recorded at a measly 8fps, which didn't prove to be very useful as a direct reference material. The footage was too short and there was just too big a gap between the frames which gave a very jolty result. I spaced the frames out so the animation was longer and 3DSMax would fill in the missing movements, but it just animated the easiest route between two points, not the most anatomically accurate.
The footage was still very useful however, especially when positioning the body accurately throughout different stages of the tricks.
I also used one piece of footage to create this animation in Adobe Flash. The low frame rate works well with animated gifs like this, but not for detailed clips which will be viewed closely. This didn't have any place within my final product, but if mirrored it could be used to make a fairly effective loading screen.
As well as recording my own footage, I watched professionally made skate videos such as The DC Video and Blind's What If. I also made use of the Replay Editor in the Skate 2 video game to perform tricks and view them back at several angles and speeds, something that wasn't possible with my own footage. The animations within Skate 2 were created using motion capture, so they are obviously reliable and accurate to use as references.
A side by side comparison of my footage and Skate 2 shows similar body positions, so I knew my animations would be fairly consistent despite using different reference materials.
