Custom animations - Idle Stretch

For this animation I wanted to depict a NPC guard on duty, maybe he has been standing there a while and needs to just loosen up a little.

I decided to focus on two areas, the head and shoulder.

The shoulder was a little more difficult than I had anticipated.

First I simply created 4 key frames at key points where I wanted the shoulder to rotate and move to, but this created a very rigid and unrealistic animation. I attempted to smooth it out in the graph editor, but nothing seemed to work, so I took it back to the drawing board.

I split the animation into two key movements, the back and forth movement and the lift to the highest point.

I first animated and keyed the foreward and back movement, making sure it was smooth and realistic.

Then I added in the shoulder lift, keying it in the middle of the movement.

This approach worked much better giving a smooth and realistic result.

The head and other movements were much easier. I added some body tilt and moved the hand into a fist while the stretch was going on to add some dynamics to the whole animation.

Finished animation available below.