This week was spent finishing the animations for Assignment 2 for this module. Since I had already finished the weight animation and adjusted most of the walk cycles which were in my showreel for the Professional Practice module, I just needed to adjust the sad walk and standard walk cycles and finish the fearful run cycle.

For the sad walk, the feedback from Alec was that I needed to make the walking look more of a shuffle rather than a proper walk as well as adjusting the rotation of the feet in a few frames so that they don’t rotate back too far. I also added a sad facial expression by making the eyes half lidded with a downturned smile. The adjusted sad walk is shown below:

Since this isn’t included in my showreel and I’m not planning on having it in future iterations of my showreel, I didn’t render it out in any of the views and the only reason I rendered out the perspective views of the other walk cycles I’m submitting was because they were included in the showreel. I believe the sad walk looks more believable in its sadness and I’m very proud of how the sad walk turned out with the addition of the shuffling feet and the sad facial expression.

For the standard walk, the feedback from Alec was making sure the arms aren’t moving to straight in the forwards and backwards movements and adjusting the rotation of the feet in a few frames so that they don’t rotate back too far which is something I adjusted in the other walk cycles. Since this is a standard walk cycle, I decided to just keep the default facial expression to show that it is just a standard default walk cycle whereas the other submissions have added character from the facial expressions and movements. The adjusted standard walk is shown below:

Like the sad walk cycle I didn’t render it out in any of the views since I’m not planning on including it in any iterations of my showreel, especially for this particular one it is just a standard default walk cycle and wouldn’t be the best to include in the showreel because it wouldn’t be memorable as there’s nothing that would stand out to the employer for a standard walk cycle, but I figured this walk cycle would still be good to include in the submission as it’ll show how a standard walk cycle can be changed to become all of the other walk cycles I have submitted. Overall I am quite proud of this walk cycle even if it is just a standard default one as it looks very well and wouldn’t look out of place alongside the other walk cycles I am submitting as the quality is still there even if it isn’t as expressive to convey a certain feeling like the other walk cycles do.

For the run cycle, since I wanted it to be a fearful run cycle, I used the following references to help convey the terror AZRI feels:

https://giphy.com/gifs/thelumineers-iii-the-lumineers-junior-sparks-YnHLvHsv4owyNI3V0I

https://www.pngdir.com/gif-images/running/running-gif-1855/

In the first GIF the arms are moving more frantically and in the second GIF the head is rotating more and the facial expression is more terrified while the hair moves during the run, and I will be using these aspects from both GIFS to make my fearful run more believable.

Since I used the first GIF for the arm reference, they don’t move as far back since they only reach halfway before going forwards again which creates an offset with the leg movements as the timing of the arms no longer coincides with the timing of the legs which adds to the frantic erratic nature of the run. To help make the movement feel more frantic, I made the poses in IK to add a bit more irregularity to the movement almost as if the arms are flailing randomly in the rush to get away from whatever AZRI is fearful of. Similarly, I used the following GIF for the head turning to look behind her which I am implementing into my fearful run cycle to add to the fear AZRI feels:

https://tenor.com/view/running-away-escape-fear-the-invisible-man-movie-gif-15563057

The blocking playblasts for the fearful run cycle are shown below:

Since I’m not used to animating with IK arms for a lot of movement such as in this run cycle, the movement looks a bit choppy in the blocking playblast. Depending on how it looks in the in-betweens playblast, the choppy movement could work in my favour to sell the fact that the movement is frantic and irregular through her feeling so fearful as nerves are clearly getting the best of her in this frightening situation.

The in-betweens playblasts for the fearful run cycle are shown below:

The movement still looks quite choppy in the arms, so this is something I’ll have to adjust in the graph editor so it’s not as extreme. The head turning to look behind her works pretty well with the rest of the animation in terms of timing and how long she turns for, and for the arms I got lucky that the irregular timing I used for them coincided with the end of the feet animation so it should loop pretty seamlessly when it’s looped 3 times for submission. In the polishing stage I just need to adjust the movements of all the controls in the graph editor including the arms, legs and head, as well as adding hair movements, fixing the skirt and poncho controls so the mesh doesn’t poke through and finally adding a fearful facial expression with the mouth looking like it’s panting. I’m considering adding motion blur to the animation once the polishing stage is finished to make the movement look more fast and frantic, but I’ll see what that looks like and whether the playblast without the motion blur looks better.

The polishing playblasts without motion blur and the renders with motion blur for the fearful run cycle are shown below:

Even though I will be submitting both versions for submission, I believe the one with motion blur looks better overall as it sells the panic and frantic nature of the run better. In order to have the motion blur show up since it wouldn’t show up when doing playblasts, I had to render it out with motion blur enabled and then edited together the image sequences. Generally speaking, it was quite difficult doing arm movements with IK arms for this animation especially since the timing was offset with the feet and body movements so the values of the controls wouldn’t be identical as they still needed adjusted to both match the previous frames of the same pose and not get in the way of the body as the pose, height and rotation of the body wouldn’t be the same for the identical arm poses due to the offset timing. I do believe the end result was worth the effort though and I’m considering using the motion blur version of the fearful run cycle in my showreel because I love how that version turned out from experimenting with motion blur, but I still love the original version without motion blur and I’m very proud of how both turned out.

For a recap of what I’ll be submitting, I’ll be submitting several walk cycles (angry walk, happy walk, sad walk, tired walk, walk and wave and normal walk cycle), a fearful run cycle (with and without motion blur) and a weight animation where AZRI tries to pull a sword from a rock, with the walk cycles and run cycle being in multiple views as I thought they would be best viewed in several ways whereas the weight animation is only in one view from the side as it’s the most relevant one for the animation being shown. The animations I am submitting are shown below: