Second Walk Cycle

Second Walk Cycle

Today (and the end of yesterday) I have been working on this walk cycle. I drew up just a few thumbnails of the key poses I wanted. This is not finished but it will be finished tomorrow with an updated post with a more critical analyses

This post is just an update and I will also mention what I still need to work on tomorrow.

Side:

This view shows clearly that I still need to add the movement at the wrists. The legs also look a little funny on the contact pose. I might need to exaggerate them more. I can also see the need for more foot movements as they pass from the contact to the up poses.

Front:

I worked a little of movement into the hips but not the shoulders yet. One thing I do notice is that the hips could do with a lot more movement on the down/contact pose...a sort of follow through perhaps? I also still need to add head movement.

Back:

This view just highlights more the need to add some shoulder movements. 

Far Out:

...I am particularly proud of the arms to be honest. 

Summary:

I feel this animation has been somewhat of a break-through for my animation skills. I was able to make sense of the graph editor and fix all of the problems that occurred with the interpolation. Perhaps the next stage is to animate without these problems happening in the first place...if that is even possible?

I also used the graph editor to edit a few things myself which is also a step in the right direction (the graph editor is my friend now).

This is also the first walk cycle I have done where I have adjusted the timing of the key poses to better suit the personality of the walk, rather than working with the usual 24 frame walk cycle.

Tomorrow I will have this finished and then I will blog it and analyse where I go from there but I am thinking I will try another couple of walk cycles that will require a completely different approach to timing than this. This animation is at 55 frames so it would be nice to do one using a lot more but also one that uses a lot less.