Get down to the Root of things…

I wanted to quickly mention how important the root is in your character. With thinking about all our arcs, and overlap and all the critical principles. We can quickly overlook this fundamental area to pat attention to when you are cleaning up your shot. And that is the root of your character.

In case your asking yourself, what is the root of the character? It is the core part of your character (generally around the hip area) that translates the character forward or back. If for example, you had all your arms and legs on FK, your entire character would move if you moved your character by their root.

So, why is this so important? Well, like we mentioned before, it is the core movement in your character (Top of the group node), so everything is based upon it.

I see many students go into their work, polishing the arms, fingers, head, legs, BEFORE they have nailed down the timing of the root. If the root isn’t working, then your shot will never work, no matter how much you polish everything else. So make sure that it is working how you want it too, before you go and polish other parts of the body.

Below is 1 example of a students work, before they attacked the root. This is 1 of many that I found, and the problem that was happing was that they were focusing on so much at once (arms, hands, head etc), that they forgot to nail down the root. The second example is the same jump, but with the root being finessed. When that was done, there was a little finessing on the feet, to make the jump more believable. But that was done AFTER the root was finessed. I hope you can see the large difference between the two, just from finessing the root.

Before:

After:

Dr. Makarewicz