493 Week 6

 

10/5/2025

                       Post 6 Azula:

        This week, I shifted my focus to Azula’s animation and decided to give Toph a short break. After spending the last few weeks refining Toph’s movements and smaller secondary details, I wanted to turn my attention to the other half of the fight so I could start building more interaction between the two characters. My goal was to animate Azula performing a dynamic flip—using the momentum from Toph’s ground attack to push off a rock and transition into a smooth aerial movement. I wanted this motion to feel fluid and powerful, showing off Azula’s agility while contrasting Toph’s grounded, heavy fighting style.

        Animating this flip proved to be more challenging than I expected. The concept was clear in my head, but when I began translating it into motion, I ran into an issue with the base rotation. Because the flip involved both vertical and horizontal movement, I had to rotate her main control to follow the arc of the motion. However, I accidentally animated the rotation across both the x and z axes, which caused an unwanted jitter in the motion. Essentially, Azula’s flip looked shaky and uneven instead of clean and controlled. I spent a good amount of time trying to isolate which axis was causing the problem and eventually realized that the movement should only be happening on the x axis.

        Fixing this issue has been a valuable learning experience. It reminded me how easy it is for small mistakes in rotation or keyframe alignment to throw off the entire flow of an animation. Even though I’m still in the process of polishing Azula’s flip, I’m really happy with how the scene is coming together. Having both characters in motion finally makes the fight sequence feel more alive. Next week, I plan to finish cleaning up Azula’s flip and start working on her landing and recovery poses. Once those are solid, I’ll move on to syncing her timing with Toph’s attacks to make the scene flow as one cohesive action.