For the animations in Dutty Juice, for the most part, I used empty objects to control the animations of the object. I found it easier to control the different dynamics then. It made it easier to make the Can and the fruit rotate on several axis at once. The video below demonstrates that well. I could move the empty up and rotate as well as rotate the cans.
The graph editor was my best friend!
I turned the interpolation mode to Bezier and then played with the easing to make it a lot snappier.
For example in the first shot, I just used the scale tool to move the handles and make the curve a lot steeper this made the camera move a lot snappier.
Shape Keys
The other kind of animation I did was with shape keys. I thought a really cool scene would be to have the can opening. I used the model I had but I needed to cut it to open it. I did this back in Maya and then exported the can as an FBX into Blender.
I then went into object data properties and added a new shape key to the cap and to the opening part.
It was quite tricky to make it look right. I had to try several times and took a few attempts with different models, by going back into Maya and adjusting where the cut should go. Finally I just used the proportional editing to move the can opening down and the cap up.
It was just a case of timing then. It really helped that I had already found a sound effect that I liked and imported it into Blender and used that for timing.
I tried to have the principles of animation in mind when I was setting the key frames. I tried to add some anticipation and have a bit of exaggeration with it.
Thoughts
It was so much fun to animate and breathe life into these inanimate objects. I’m not sure if Maya has this option, but in Blender I could chose a pre-set easing in and out I wanted which was really cool. But most of the time it was just experimenting with moving the handles to make the movements snappier like shot one, or a slower, smoother ease out like the space scene, that way there was a nice juxtaposition from those scenes as well.