Week 5 A Second Push Animation?

As I was about to begin video referencing and blocking out the pull animation, I instead opted to make a second push animation that will feature two characters, just so I can create a comedic event occurring between two people. My intended plot for this animation is for one character (the brawny one) to first approach the object, attempt a push initially fail then continue to struggle until the second character (the scrawny one) walks up, pushes the brawny character out of the way, and then proceed to easily push the object out of frame, to the brawny characters stunned dismay.

https://vimeo.com/88141183

For the "unyielding" resistance push, I used a small TV trolley and pushed it up against a wall, in order to show a full body motion push simply because it faking a hard push would not translate well because there is not physical reaction to the struggle of the push.

https://vimeo.com/88141184

In the second push I threw some partial acknowledgement and reaction just so there is something to work from when animating the secondary character. I did retrospectively notice that there is a stark difference in camera angles from the first reference to the second, however it is simply a visual guide not a complete shot for shot copy, just to allow wiggle room when key framing.


https://vimeo.com/88141185
https://vimeo.com/88149305

Here is the initial playblast, stepped and smooth of this sequence so far, I focused on one character at a time just so that a can manage each portion of the animation in an efficient manner. My next step is to introduce the second character who will complete a walk cycle (I have to decide whether to overly personify it) into the scene, push the first character out of the way then proceed to push. These steps do seem rather straight forward on paper, however I have encountered a few keyframing issues with my second reference, but I have been informed of a method of animating where I key the frames at the beginning, then dragging them into time. I am a tad uncertain about this method of animation but it is one I have to work with as I have no other method of resolving my problem.