Back in film school, I wanted to do a demo reel that showcased motion that not only was difficult to animate with a computer, but was visually interesting and exciting to watch. Breakdancing was the perfect choice. To do this, I had to pick up every video I could find (this was before YouTube, and most breakdancing videos were shot on tape at that point), and go through them frame-by-frame to find out what the key poses and breakdowns looked like. It was a lot of work, but as any animator will tell you, there's no other way to pull off complex animations. In my student film B-Boy, the moves I had my character do included a 6 step, Swipes, Turtle, Headspin, and Windmill (the 6 step and Turtle were the only two I was ever able to do in real life). Here are some of the thumbnail drawings I did to get the poses and timing down (30 frames per second):
The 6 step:
This 6 step is similar to the style of the one I did in my reel. He does it all at once in the last 3rd of the video.
And here are the thumbnails. The order of the pages goes from left to right on the top, then left to right on the bottom. The three number columns represent the frame # on the video, the # of my scene in Softimage 3.7, and the overall # it would be if it were on its own:
Turtle:
These thumbnails go in order from top to bottom, left page to right page:
And finally, the famous Windmills:
