Animate a Flour Sack Leap With Weight

Flour Sack Suicide

In this animation tutorial we show how to animate a Flour Sack hurling itself from a great height.  

The purpose of the tutorial is to create the illusion of weight and balance, by animating the flour sack landing, bouncing, and settling on the ground. 

The tutorial uses the Rockin' Rooster Flour Sack rig, downloadable from high end3d.com. 

Flour Sack Suicide Animation Demo Reel

Song: Endless Lights
Music by: CreatorMix.com

The Illusion of Weight

Digital animation rigs (unlike stop motion rigs) have no intrinsic weight, so animators have to simulate the weight, to the make the Flour Sack feel heavy - and by controlling the timing and spacing of the leap.  

Flour Sack Rigs

There are two flour sack rigs we recommend for this tutorial.

1. "Rockin Rooster" Flour Sack Rig

Rockin' Rooster Flour Sack

The Tutorial uses the Rockin' Rooster flour sack which you can download free at highend3d.com.  We like to use this rig in the early stages of learning animation so that students can get used to the idea of creating the illusion of weight, and also learn how to get a performance from an inanimate object.

Getting Started
To animate effectively with the Rockin' Rooster flour sack rig, first start by selecting the two square red and green feet controls on the flour sack rig (shown right) and, in the channel box, change the Parent setting from World to Main.

This will make sure that the feet follow the Main Body Control, which will make the flour sack much easier to animate.  To see more tips on how to use the Rockin' Rooster flour sack, read this blog post. 

Joe Daniels Flour Sack Rig

2. Joe Daniel's Flour Sack Rig 

You can also download the free Joe Daniels Flour Sack Rig at Gumroad.  It's a very good rig, great for learning animation. 

Posing Tips
Joe recommends "thinking of the yellow cylinder controls (Top_Control and Bottom_Control) as the primary first-pass pose controls, and pose them first.  The shoulder controls have an attribute that sets whether they follow the hierarchy, or are free to stick to the world.  You may want to change this, depending on your scene."

Work Method

Flour Sack Suicide thumbnails

To start animating, take a look at the thumbnail sketch to the right.  Use these thumbnails to create your key poses.

1. Start at frame 1, pose the flour sack.

2. Next, do the anticipation pose at frame nine.  

3. At frame 13, the flour sack leaps up into the air, and at frame 17 you have the "mid air position" where the flour sack pauses at the top of the leap (in many ways this exercise is like the bouncing ball exercise, but with a more complex rig). 

The Tricky Part

The hardest part is to get the flour sack to settle at the end in a believable way. 

Tutorial at Vimeo

You can find the Flour Sack Tutorial at our Vimeo Channel.

1. Flour Sack Leap Part One https://vimeo.com/video/879146418
2. Flour Sack Leap Part Two https://vimeo.com/video/879146494
3. Flour Sack Leap Part Three https://vimeo.com/video/879146529
4. Flour Sack Leap Part Four https://vimeo.com/video/879146590

To see some examples of weight and balance animation created by our students, watch the demo reel below:

Weight and Balance Animation Demo Reel

To find out more about Animation Apprentice, click here for a link to Frequently Asked Questions. To sign up for our next classroom at Animation Apprentice, follow this link.