Sometimes the best way to continue a project is to scrap it all and start over. I have been working sporadically on a animation set to the tune “UFO’s, Big Rigs, & BBQ” by Mojo Nixon, featuring a redneck truck driver, space alien and – of course, BBQ.

I was able to get decent results creating a humanoid figure using Sculptris (an amazing free program) and was delighted to import him into Blender, get him rigged and make him move. Problems arose when I discovered my mesh wasn’t optimal for animating, had some proportions too far out of whack and had limited ranges of motion.

It also didn’t help that my reference material (me, filming myself acting out what I wanted my character to do) was poorly acted, not thought out and too herky-jerky. It’s what I get for guzzling a ton of coffee and filming myself…

Anyway – back to the drawing board. I’m resculpting my character to better animate and instead of filming my mouth lip-syncing the song and projecting it onto my mesh, I’m adding a real mouth and will use shape keys to lip sync him to the song – more complicated, but closer to what real animators do.