Conquering the Tower of Polish by Jordan Barg

This one is all about the last 20% that makes or breaks a shot. You take a decent spline and push it through spacing, arcs, and cleanup until it plays solid on loop and in real time.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• How to read a spline and spot what actually needs polish vs what to leave alone
• Cleanup workflow for graph editor, tangents, and overshoots
• Adding overlap, settle, and texture without breaking the main pose reads
• Facial polish that supports body mechanics and acting beats
• How to prep a shot for review and final presentation

✅ Requirements

• Skills: Basic animation principles, comfortable with blocking and splining, familiar with graph editor
• Tools: Maya or Blender, video reference player
• Hardware: PC capable of smooth 3D viewport playback, 16GB RAM recommended

📝 Description

Polish is not about adding more keys. It is about removing the stuff that distracts. Jordan walks through a practical order of operations — hips first, then feet, hands, and head — so you stop chasing curves in circles.

You will spend a lot of time in the graph editor, but not just smoothing everything. The focus is on keeping spacing honest, fixing pops on contacts, and making sure your arcs stay clean when the shot moves fast. Lots of before/after comparisons, so you can see what changed and why.

Later passes cover texture and face. That means small overlap in the spine and neck, grounded weight on stops, and facial acting that does not fight the body. You also get a solid routine for self-review: how to loop it, flip it, watch it small, and catch errors before a lead does.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• Animators who can spline a shot but get stuck in endless polish and never lock it
• Students and juniors building reel shots who want that clean, professional finish

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

Jordan Barg is an animator and mentor at Animawarriors, focused on shot finishing and professional review workflows. He works daily with student shots on body mechanics and acting, giving straight, production-style notes. His teaching style is no-fluff: what to fix first, what to ignore, and how to call a shot done.

🏁 Final Result

• A polished, portfolio-ready animation shot with clean spline, settled overlap, and finished facial performance, presented with a clean playblast.