Big Sword Man Animation, Blocking

Here's the current animation I'm working on.  I've been wanting to do a heavy sword combo for a while now.  Right now I'm still blocking it out, using a slightly different method than I have before.  So far I've learned a few things from this one:

1. Joe Daniel's Body Mechanics Rigs are awesome! They're worth every penny.  They have some great features that really show off body mechanics, such as the twisting in the arms/legs.  It does help that they are fairly blank.  Also, I always forget how ridiculously useful turning on and off body parts is.

2. Along those lines, I'm mostly in IK arm space for this one, it really helps to block the hands without the arms visible.  I can focus on where they need to be, then turning on the arms later, I can adjust them so the elbow actually works properly.  In fact, the left hand was the very last thing I touched in the video above.

3. Getting good reference isn't enough unless you are inspired by it too.  I mean, that's obvious, right?  I tried to jump into this one though, with some reference I had shot a month or two ago, and I was just struggling.  When I recorded some fresh reference though, I found the excitement that the old stuff just didn't give me.  I had to delete some old work, but it was absolutely worth doing.

I'll be posting an update fairly soon!