Character Walk

In this assignment we had to create Ballie (the model) doing a walk with some character to it. I decided to attempt the double bounce. This actually became much more difficult than I thought it would. However with animation the big word of the day is preparation. You work out all your kinks by sketching out your shot. Figure out the timing. That is where I struggled the most. Trying to make sure Ballie was walking at natural rate and still able to bounce twice in the step. Once I worked through those issues the actual animation went pretty smooth considering I am still learning. 

Here is the finished 3/4 character walk "double bounce"

 

Side view of character walk "double bounce"

 

Preperation sketches for double bounce

 

 

Vanilla Walk Cycle

One of the most difficult things to animate well is a walk. So many things go into it that we over look. A walk in essence is a controlled fall. Each step is either pushing us into a fall or catching us from the fall. 

Here is the splined (finished smooth version)

The stepped mode is just the key frames. 

 

Here are the notes for the preparation of the walk

 

Arcs and Path of Action

This assignment was about arcs and path of action. Arcs and path of action are what gives an organic fluidity to movement. What a better way to show this than take a simple ball and add a tail. Thus the character known as Tailor. The assignment from a side view only was to have the character Tailor bounce at least 3 times and be between 75-120 frames.

 

 

Below are the sketches used to plan out the animation above.

Anticipation & Squash and Stretch

This assigment is about Anticipation & Squash and Stretch. Good animation almost never moves without anticipation. It helps make a character or object not feel robotic. It also helps lend weight and physical believability to the character. In animation a character would never really have his hand go from a rest postion strait to an object he was intending to pick up. In an example he could move his hand up above the object first allowing time for the fingers to extend out. This would notify the viewer of the characters intent of action. Then he could bring his hand down and grab the object allowing the view to easily follow.

This assignment from a side view only is taking a ball and animating it through an obstacle course. Only the first bounce or jump are we aloud to have the ball act as a "character" to show anticipation. You will notice the ball at the begining push up then hunch down for momentum to anticipate jump. After the initial anticipation and jump the ball is to fall in a more realistic fashion. The frame limit is between 60-120.

 

Notes for the obstacle course below. As you can see while creating the animation I altered the path near the end last minute as the frame limitations to have it go over the last ledge were causing problems.  There was not enought time to allow it to settle naturally. So in this new version I have it hit the edge and bounce down.

 

 

 

This weeks Stu Pose was to show "devestated".

 

Strenght Stu Pose

Here is a stu sketches and pose representing physical strength.

 

Sketches

 

Maya Pose

Light and Heavy ball boune

This assigment was about timing and spacing. We had to take a light ball (like a tennis ball) and a heavy ball (like a bowling ball) and have them bounce next to each other for comparison. The ball chart below shows the ticks for the balls paths.

Below is the animation.  I ended up having the heavy ball come in from the right side to have less confusion.

 

Ball Bounce preperation

The main focus of this assignment was all about preperation. They teach you should spend almost as much time planning as you do in animating.  Below is a diagram charting out a ball bouncing to a stop. As easy as it may seem I saved a lot of time sketching it out first.

Here is the animation.

Not perfect by anymeans. It actually slows down too fast at the end. Part of the problem is we are limited on how many frames we can use. So I was trying bring it to a stop before frame 100. I should have had the bounce start to loose energy sooner.  The other part of the problem I was fighting the graph editor while attmepting to learn how to use it.  I did not quite grasp the in's and out's. While I still have a lot to learn in the graph editor, things did finally start to click while working on the next assignment!

First Assignment

First assignment has two parts. The first is to sketch people in public while in various poses.  The second part is to look over those sketches and pick the best one.  Then use  the sketch to arrange the Stu model in the same pose.  Below are my rough sketches. Since Stu is more of a cartoon style model I decided to sketch out an exaggerated version to help translate how I am going to pose Stu.  



Class Begins

The term for Class one has officially begun. I have my first Q&A This Wednesday. My mentor for the class will be Wes Mandell. So far everybody in the AM community have been very kind and giving lots of warm welcomes. It is great to see the energy and to feed off of it.

[Update] *Note if you followed the button from the blog front page, FYI the link on the LEFT side at the top will move chronologically forward. Thanks for visiting!

Class 1 Progress Reel

 

 

 

 Below entries will start at the beginning of class and move chronologically by date entry.