Blizzard's great learning experience!

Let me start by saying that I am already a huge fan of blizzard, not only from a gamer perspective but an animator as well. Everything they have ever put out contains enough emotion and story to make a grown man cry. So, naturally when I heard about Overwatch I was excited beyond belief. The poster child for this new game is my personal favorite character "Tracer". Tracer is a quick low damage scout of sorts, who relies mostly on her speed and ability to back off heavy aggression. But thats not why I like her character so much. Tracer is an energetic, funny, kind person! She jumps out to me because she seems like more than just a character, she seems human. This in itself is impressive for blizzard to create something on this level, so when the "butt pose" became a thing I immediately questioned the fan response. Of coarse at this point I was basing my opinion of the situation off of a few internet articles and videos, I had not experienced Tracer myself until after the pose had already been changed. Knowing now her play style and comedic charm, I too would have argued the poses purpose. Which leads into what Im sure some of you consider more important than my favorite character. Actually creating the character and generating a response in the first place. As an animator my job is to know my characters inside and out, in a sense when I animate a character I like to think how I believe they would. Knowing their mind set and body language is beyond important. When I first attempted to figure out how to naturally pose characters I took a look at myself. I set up a small webcam and shot some footage for about 30min, trying to act as naturally as possible while searching the web. I found that my two most prominent positions were, laying back with my legs up on my desk and my hands folded in my lap and leaning back with one hand grasping my chin and the other supporting my arm by my lap. Once I realized that I kept coming back to these two positions I figured out that a characters body language can convey much more than just what they are doing! feeling, energy, purpose, etc. can all be determined via their body language.  Long story short, a good pose shouldn't be forced. It should come from the character's wants, goals, and habits. Having a character live and giving a character life are two different things..

In terms of the article and video, I was immediately interested because...well... Overwatch.. but it truly did provide some very useful information. Interest, physicality, conveying the character, all of its points were well met and presented in an interesting manner. The pacing was so well with the examples and explanations that I hardly noticed that it was almost a half hour! The fact that someone can manage to provide introductory information, character information, animation information, and counter points to each; is evident of an exemplary editor. Something like this requires that passion though. If you can't resonate with any aspect of what you are trying to accomplish, be it characters, videos, etc, then you should probably reconsider your method. but maybe thats just me...