Stefan's Body Mechanics Workflow
Warning: Industry-standard animation methods are costing your valuable time!
AAA Game Animator Shows You Why Commonly Accepted 3D Animation Workflows Might Be Slowing You Down
Dear Friend,
If you’ve been frustrated with the traditional 3D body mechanics workflows that are often promoted by online schools and tutorials, keep reading—I’ve got some exciting news for you.
For years, I faced the same challenges with outdated animation workflows taught in 3D animation tutorials...
These traditional methods were inspired 2D animation techniques and failed to utilize the power of 3D tools.
The commonly taught workflows were time-consuming for me, stifling my creativity and making it difficult to meet work deadlines at work.
After spending a decade in the AAA game industry and working on titles like The Last of Us Part II, Tomb Raider and Marvels Avengers.
I learned various techniques from mentors and colleagues.
Early in my career, I was slow and worried about missing deadlines, so I invested hundreds of hours refining a workflow that truly works for me—and now for my students.
I didn’t create all these techniques myself. They’re a blend of methods I’ve learned from brilliant animators over the years, combined with my own trial and error.
So you don’t have to go through the struggle I went through.
Maybe your goal is to animate faster or express your creativity without being bogged down by a rigid, step-by-step process. This workflow allows you to do just that, once you’ve mastered it.
So, what is this workflow all about?
In a nutshell, it’s all about simplifying motion to its core and treating each body part as if it were a bouncing ball.
Its just not a Workflow…It’s a shift in your thinking to overly simplifying motion down to its core basics.
First, focus on the spacing of your character rather than individual poses.
Then, animate each body part in layers, using a third-party script in Maya to make the rig easier to work with.
It’s as simple as moving an action figure or toy in your hand, rather than posing it frame by frame.
You’ll animate quickly and roughly, using layers and the graph editor. This means your initial poses won’t be perfect, but as you refine the animation, you can craft more dynamic poses on top of the existing motion.
It may sound counterintuitive to start with splines and then move back to a pose-to-pose method, but this approach has helped me avoid crunch time on projects.
In the course, I also show how I use AI tools to get better references for 3D body mechanics shots and to better understand body mechanics overall. It’s a unique way of working, and I haven’t seen anyone else teaching it like this in the industry.
Here are some examples:
If you find these videos helpful, I’ve created a full short course where I walk you through the entire process.
I call it:
Stefan’s Body Mechanics Workflow
I’ve kept the price affordable for animation students, but not so cheap that it becomes just another course you watch for two minutes and forget about.
The main module includes 11 videos where I demonstrate my workflow from start to finish, explaining each concept along the way.
While the course is done in Maya, some of my students have successfully applied the workflow to Blender.
The launch price is $97
I’ve also included two bonus videos:
- Polish tips for each body part—this video alone is incredibly valuable.
- How to use the pose-to-pose method to make your animations even more stylized.
I’m excited to see you learn all about this technique.
– Stefan
Questions? Reach out to me at
gameanimatoracademy(at)gmail(dot)com