Walk Cycle Finished

Walk Cycle Finished

The walk cycle was actually finished the day after my last post but I didn't have the time to blog it then. Most of today has consisted of preparing for this blog post with GIFS (as well as lectures). 

We also had a lecture today on the pre-production requirements for our submission...in two weeks. I am going to create a word document where I link to my blog throughout with small descriptions on each area, simple.

Now I will finish up on my walk cycle with some analyses.

The walk cycle is somewhat inspired by the ministry of silly walks, but only loosely. By this I mean that I watched it by chance and wanted to create my own exaggerated walk. My curiosity with exaggeration still lives. 

Side:

This is the "completed" walk cycle, I am pleased with the outcome but I have benefited more from the learning curve. This is the first animation I would say I have done where I have actually been in control of the rig the whole time. There were times when particular problems happened with a foot rising when it shouldn't have but I was able to easily fix these using the graph editor. This view of course though is the best angle with perhaps the least amount of obvious errors. I really have become more adept with the graph editor.

Front:

This view here seems to emphasise problems with the arms. They look good from the side but they don't have much movement where they either move in towards the body or away from it, from this angle. I can't really see any shoulder movements even though I did put them in. Perhaps in future I should look to exaggerate them more.

Back:

This view reveals the hip movements to us. From this angle they look to wiggle at the bottom but I animated this thinking the movements I put in made sense. The weight on one side of the hips would be increased as he goes down into the contact pose, that side would stiffen up then the foot going forward would see the relating hip go up as the leg is raised.

Top:

This view here shows the feet popping forward in a jarring way, again, it doesn't seem to be much of a problem in the other views. 

The problem probably is that where his foot is in this image below...

...jumps back to where it is in the image below. This can be quite jarring from some angles. It was suggested that in the first image (or rather, the time of the cycle where this image is from) it looks like he is taking a huge step and that in the image below his foot should actually be further forward. I see where they were coming from but I also think it still works with the way I have done it. 

Far Away:

Progressive Workflow:

Below are some gifs of the walk cycle in progression.

01:

This is the walk cycle with one leg blocked in.

02:

More exaggeration is being added.

03:

More refinement in the legs being exaggerated.

04:

Here the arms have been started to be worked up as well.

05:

This is close to the final animation. Only a few minor tweaks left on this one before it became the final the walk cycle.

Exaggerated legs:

This image is of the exaggerated leg.

I was able to get the exaggerated part to happen without using any key frames as you can see above. I just broke the tangents of the keys and manipulated only one side of them. I was able to get the exaggeration by extending the curve between the keys beyond a natural ease in-ease out. I did this on the y and the z axis to exaggerate the feet going up and out in each step.

Summary:

This animation may not relate directly to my honours in terms of character performance but rather towards the technical side of animation. I got comfortable with the graph editor, both for fixing problems and editing curves to get desired effects.

This walk cycle if anything, should only be used primarily for learning. I have been told that my exaggerated poses have been fairly good but its the believability of a character that I have not quite got yet. My next animation therefore will be more of an acted out scene.

Case Studies:

I saw a technique of drawing over frames of a film but still showing the full scene; this then allows me to show the acting of a character through lines drawn over the scene. I saw this idea from Annie Sharpe (fourth year last year), apparently they got taught this in 3rd year.

This is one example she did to give you an idea of what I want to do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBWz1g-x7BY

Today I will select the scene from YouTube I want to analyse for doing it tomorrow. Hopefully by doing this, along with my animations so far, I will have a good foundation to push on into semester two with my character performances.