Bottle Strike - Mery test animation

Two months ago Meryproject.com released a rig named, you guessed it, Mery.

It is very Disney/Pixar inspired, but also very easy to use.

I decided to test out the rig in a animation, but I didn't want a simple walking or talking animation.

I wanted something more physical, so I came up with the idea of having Mery using her charm and strength to immobilize a annoying disturbance that won't let her enjoy her drink in peace.

I started off by recording a reference video where I just basicly threw a bottle up and down, and made swinging motions, to get the animation right. It helped a lot to get the physics right to get a smooth curved animation. It took a lot of tweaking to get the arm to swing correctly, but it was a easy fix once I rearranged a lot of the keyframes, since I ended over complicating the motion when it's just a simple curve.

Afterwards I started tweaking the facial animations for Mery's face, which was definetly the most amusing part of the process. The rig comes with a very extensive picker and poser extensions that really helps out. Did run into some issues with it at first since it wouldn't react to my script commands, but I managed to sort it out.

Check out my youtube channel and website for more animation