Clean Up the Spine and Arms
The upper body: chest rotation, lead and follow, and the overlap running through arms, chest, neck and head.
With the hips finished, the upper body becomes a question of what responds to what, and when.
What the video covers
Cleaning up the arms and the chest rotations, then working the lead and follow through the whole upper body: the overlap between arms, chest, neck and head. Each is tracked and taken into the Curve Editor, with the timing and the easing adjusted so the chain resolves in the right order.
The ideas doing the work
A turn is a chain, and the order is the animation. The hips commit, the chest follows, the neck follows that, the head arrives last. Getting that sequence right is most of what makes a turn look like a body rather than a statue on a turntable. It is the pendulum again, on a branching chain.
Lead and follow is not a fixed offset. How far each part lags depends on its mass and on how committed the movement is. A sharp turn has the head snapping late and hard; a casual one has it drifting round. Applying the same offset to everything produces a wave.
Arms are carried, not driven. During a turn the arms mostly answer the chest. Keying them independently is how they end up looking placed.
The head resolves last and matters most. It is where the audience is looking, so its timing carries a disproportionate amount of the read.
What to watch for
- Nothing shares keyframes with the hips. If it does, there is no overlap by definition.
- The head settling after everything else. If it arrives with the chest, the turn reads as rigid.
- Arcs on the hands. They travel furthest, so broken arcs show there first.
- Easing per part. Each element in the chain has its own acceleration, not a shared one.
Next: Popping Cleanup, the final pass.