:: Art of the Bow with François Rabbath ::

A First Peek…

Here are three 5 second samples of the animation work in progress. Rabbath is demonstrating a large descending shift - notice the left hand preparation and how the elbow leads the shift. Eventually audio will be added, ripped from the live video that was shot during the motion capture and then synced to the animation. There are minor tweaks that will be made. You may notice that Rabbath’s left hand is robotic - this is on purpose for two reasons, first, to show the detail of the joints clearly, and second, we just don’t have the money to come up with a sophisticated skin look for the hand. One issue with this particular hand, however, is that it appears to have super long fingers coming all the way from the wrist. In future versions bars will be placed between the knuckle joints to help show Rabbath’s virtual palm. The second minor tweak is the kind of thing that has be bedeviling the animators in this whole process - the dance between the bass, the left hand, the bow and the body. You may notice at the tail end of the clip that the first finger of the left hand seems to dip into the fingerboard. Finding and fixing these kinds of tweaks will continue to take time.