My Pre-Production Process
Pre-production is the most important step to creating a beautiful and stunning product and the process varies greatly across different people. I will shortly explain how I personally like to start a new piece of work.
Reference Gathering
First step for me is to gather reference. If the work I am doing is an animation, in this case it is, I will begin by finding the right videos. If the animation is just simple movement, I might personally act it out and record it, however if it's something with more action, then I like to find inspiration from youtube videos of real people doing the same acts.
Thumbnails
Next step in the pre-production process is to draw a very basic sets of drawings that show roughly what will be happening in the animation using the references that we gathered. This is done so that the next steps go as smoothly as possible.
Blocking
Since I personally prefer to jump straight into the 3D scene as soon as I can, I start blocking my animation. Blocking is when the most important poses in an animation are set in place. I like to think of blocking as drawing thumbnails but in a 3D scene. At this stage, ironically, nothing is being animated yet. This is because it is much easier to fix any timing or pose related errors before any animation is done.
Polishing
The last step is my personal favorite. This is where all the magic happens. The rough animation from the last step is taken and detail gets added. Transitions between frames are no longer sudden and every movement is as fluid as can be. I usually spend the most amount of time in this stage to ensure the end product is as impressive as possible.