Character animation study

I really want to get more into animation, so I decided now is the time. The aim of this study is to familiarize myself with rigging and basic animation workflow. The first part was animated over 3 days, and contains 3 animations: a walk cycle, a run cycle, & a jump. Please tell me where I can improve! :slight_smile: Also I didn’t bother to render it so this is just from the viewport.

Better than I can do, but I will say that it’s a little difficult to pick it apart with the motion blur.

Yes, I agree with Xraygunner, harder to see what’s going on with the motion blur. If this is just from the veiw port, why is there motion blur???

Anyway, I think you need to ‘loosen’ it up a little bit, it’s all too stiff. Get more hip & shoulder motion in there. During the walk cycle, they don’t move much. Looks like you have secondary motion in there on the hands during the walk cycle, but you could probably have more. If you’re not working in the graph editor to get secondary motion, then you really need to get in there and work, it the easiest way to add secondary motion. But the hips need more movement, side to side, and up and down, as it walks. Also them & the shoulders needs more rotation.

Same goes for the run cycle, you need even more movement for a run cycle, maybe not so much side to side motion, but definetly a lot more up and down motion. During a run cycle, there are times when neither foot is on the ground, so the body is up in the air. Then when a foot contacts the ground, the body goes down, and continues to drop for a frame or two after foot contact, before recoiling. Also more rotation, a lot more than a walkcycle. And the body should be leaning forward maybe a bit more.

The jump looks pretty good. Timing on the hands going up looks good, they follow the body, which I think is right for a simple jump like this. But then they snap downwards quickly, don’t think they should do that. Think of them as bouncing balls. If you haven’t done a bouncing ball tutorial yet, do one, then you’ll see what I mean.

But overall, I think it’s a good start! I’m seeing some secondary motion in there that you don’t noramlly see in beginner animations like this. Keep it up!!

Randy

Right, remove the motion blur (maybe upload in 60fps instead), work on more hip movement, & secondary movement is a thing (I didn’t know it had a name). For the jump I should probably just record myself for reference since I couldn’t find any on the internet. Thank you :slight_smile:

The walk cycle looks pretty good, they all do, actually. The run could use a bit more shoulder counter-rotation to match the hips. In all three, the hands appear to be a bit ‘floppy’. Generally if someone is that relaxed, it will show up in the rest of their walk. And, when running, typically people tend to tense their forearms and make fists, so the hand gets even stiffer. Viewport renders are fine (in fact, recommended) for WIP animations.

Here’s an updated version. Orinoco I didn’t read your comment before I made this, thank you anyway. I don’t think I’ll change these animations anymore but I’ll definitely keep everything in mind for the future. I also studied The 12 Principles of Animation today so that should help :slight_smile:

Make sure to watch it on YouTube to get the full 60 fps glory!

Hi BjarkeDuDe,
Lets talk about the walk alone, first. Are you familiar with terms like Contact pose, Down pose, Passing pose and Up pose?
Refer to this image, if not.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]357297[/ATTACH]
As you can see, the hip movement vertically helps sell the weight of the character. And this vertical movement is caused by the transfer of weight for the entire foot to the toe end of the foot. Currently, what i see in your animation walk cycle is that the character is turning sideways only and putting a slight bit of X rotation when the character is in passing position on one of the leg. What i would suggest if to solely concentrate on the position of the hip on the z axis, feet positions and heel rotation corresponding to it.
Then we can talk about weight shift from one leg to the another and the rest to follow.

Let me know if there’s something i wasnt clear about.
Cheers,
Happy animating.

Might want to to double check that attachment :stuck_out_tongue:

oh well,
https://www.google.co.in/search?q=walk+poses&espv=2&biw=1920&bih=979&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=W0HBVOTIJ82A8QWonYGYCA&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ
chk the first image.