What I did:

With all character variants finally prepared, animation could begin. Scene 1 (the hallway, 1970s) is the opening scene of the film, introducing John at his proudest and most capable. Getting this right sets the emotional tone for everything that follows.

The establishing shot

Following feedback from Ronan Lynch (my former narrative tutor), before the hallway interior, the film now opens with an exterior establishing shot of our family home. It’s a warm 1970s morning, the Rover P6 on the driveway (sans badge), twin garage doors closed. Ronan also made a suggestion which I’d previously been considering, to show some growth progression of the garden elements – an easy fix, moving the hedges down on the Z-axis, and scaling the silver birch tree, plus I switched off the topiary from the front door, I’ll make this visible for the later scenes.

The cinematography for this shot went through some consideration. The final approach is a pan from left to right starting on the car, travelling across the front of the house, before a dolly kicks in while the pan is still moving — overlapping the two movements so they blend into one fluid motion rather than feeling like two separate moves stitched together. The movement settles on the front door, drawing the audience into John’s world before cutting to the interior.

The lighting for this exterior scene required some work. The scene uses an HDRI image for the background countryside, but to achieve an early morning feel, the HDRI strength was reduced significantly and a Sun Lamp was added at a low angle with a warm golden colour temperature. This combination gives the raking early morning light across the front of the house while retaining the HDRI for the background scenery. The result gives long shadows across the driveway, warm tones on the house front, and a deep blue sky above.

A detail worth noting for continuity across the film, the garage doors in this scene are hinged twin doors from the 1970s. In later scenes these will be replaced with a single electric remote control door, reflecting how the house changed over the decades. The audience probably won’t consciously register this detail, but it adds authenticity to the world.

The postman

Michael (supervisor) made a suggestion to have a Royal Mail van driving away as if he’d just delivered the parcel, but I couldn’t find any free assets that were suitable. I chose a different approach and added a postman delivering the parcel to the door. Rather than modelling and animating a postman character from scratch, I used a free Mixamo character (Josh) which I added the ‘Walking While Texting’ animation to, and downloaded the FBX with built-in animation – a practical solution for a brief background character.

The walk cycle

The first animation task for John was his walk along the hallway to the front door. I created an on-the-spot walk cycle in the Action Editor following a tutorial (Create a Walk Cycle Animation in Blender by Pierrick Picaut), then pushed down to the NLA Editor as a strip to be combined with root bone movement to carry John forward through the scene.

This is where the first significant problem arose. I knew my start and end points for the movement I wanted in the scene, but the feet were skidding forward rather than planting cleanly on the floor, caused by the stride length not matching the root movement speed. Some calculation was needed to work out the correct relationship between the two.

John travels approximately 7.6m in 120 frames (5 seconds at 24fps). At a 24-frame stride, that means 5 complete strides covering 1.52m each, which is a brisk, purposeful pace appropriate for a man heading to work on a good morning. Even with the correct calculations, getting the feet to plant cleanly required nudging the end position of the root movement until the sliding reduced to an acceptable level, so I cut from this shot a little earlier than I’d planned to originally. The walk cycle is functional and reads correctly on screen, but it’s noted for refinement before the final submission if I have time.

Walk cycles are genuinely one of the most technically demanding aspects of character animation for me. The relationship between cycle speed, stride length and root movement needs to be precisely matched, even small discrepancies result in noticeable foot sliding.

Playblasting to check the work

Rather than committing to full Cycles renders to check animation, playblasts (View – Render Playblast in Material Preview mode) were used throughout. This renders directly from the viewport at speed, giving a fast turnaround for checking timing and movement before committing to the full render. Doing playblasts regularly before rendering each section has saved time and hopefully prevented rendering animation that would need to be redone.

The renders for this scene have come in significantly faster than anticipated from my testing – around 20-25 seconds per frame rather than the 1 minute 21 seconds calculated from earlier tests. This is largely down to simplifying the lighting setup from scenes tested previously. At 20-25 seconds per frame, the full scene renders in a fraction of the time originally budgeted, which gives some welcome breathing space in a tight production schedule.

Opening the parcel

The scene continues with John opening the parcel containing his IAM certificate and badge. The original animatic had an OTS shot revealing the badge behind the certificate before cutting to a front shot of John’s face. This order was revised during animation as the certificate movement is awkward to animate, so the sequence now runs: OTS of John opening the box and seeing the certificate, front shot of his reaction, then back to OTS to reveal the badge. I think this works better narratively too, giving the badge reveal more impact after the audience has already seen John’s emotional response to the certificate, and then leading straight into the attachment of the badge to the car.

The order of animation for this section proved important. The prop animation was completed first; the paper certificate and badge were posed and keyframed before any character animation began. This established the physical world that John’s hands needed to interact with, making it easier to match his movements to the props rather than trying to do both simultaneously.

The same principle applied to animating John’s arms and hands. Working down the kinetic chain in order, starting with the shoulder, moving to the upper arm, through the elbow, the wrist, and finally down to the individual fingers. This gave a more controlled result than trying to pose the hand first and work backwards. The shoulder leads the movement and everything after that follows.

The face shot – thinking about nuance

The front shot of John looking at the certificate required the most thought. A deliberate directorial decision was made to have John look directly into the lens, so the camera becomes the parcel, placing the audience inside John’s moment of pride. This is an intentional choice that connects the audience directly to John as a person rather than as an observer, which is consistent with the film’s central message about identity and personhood.

Rather than starting on a smile, John has a neutral pose, taking in the certificate for 12 frames before the emotion builds. This gives the audience time to read his face and anticipate the reaction before it lands.

The animation was built up in layers, working outward from the most important elements:

Face first: the smile builds gradually over 12 frames, reaching its peak around 36 frames in. A genuine smile involves the whole face, not just the mouth. The eyebrows lift slightly (just the inner corners, not a full brow raise which would read as surprise) and they move a couple of frames after the mouth starts, because in genuine human expressions the mouth leads and the rest of the face follows. The eyes close very slightly at the peak of the smile.

Eyes: subtle movement was added to show that John is reading.

Blink: a slow satisfied blink was added at the peak of the smile. Left and right blink shape keys were offset by one frame from each other, to make the blinks look less mechanical. The first blink closes over 4 frames, holds for 2 frames, then opens over 5 frames – slower than a casual blink, which suits the satisfied quality of the moment – the second blink is slightly faster. After the blinks, the eyes open to a softer position than before.

Chest and shoulders: as the smile builds, the shoulders lift very slightly then settle back and open in a physical expression of pride.

Lean: at the peak of the smile John leans very slightly which feels like he’s sharing the moment with us, rather than performing it.

The overall shot runs to 5 seconds, giving the audience enough time to really be with John in this moment of happiness.

 

 

What I learned:

Animation is far more than keyframing positions, it’s about understanding how the human body expresses emotion at every level simultaneously. A smile isn’t just a mouth movement. Pride lives in the shoulders, the chest, the eyes, the eyebrows… Layering these elements one at a time, from the most important outward, is a more reliable approach than trying to do everything at once.

Animating props before characters, and working down the kinetic chain from shoulder to fingertip, produces more natural and controllable results than approaching the animation without a clear order.

Playblasting regularly before committing to renders is essential. It’s already caught movement and timing issues that would have cost render time to discover the hard way.

The directorial decisions made during animation are as important as the technical execution. Animation is storytelling, and every choice either serves the story or it doesn’t.

Next:

Scene 1 is now fully rendered. Scene 2 moves to the exterior driveway with John fitting the IAM badge to the car grille before heading to work, watched by his young daughter. The exterior lighting is already working well from earlier test renders, and the car is in position. Animation begins next.