One of the assignments for Animation Strategies is to animate a walk cycle, run cycle and then body mechanics, which is an expressive character animation. At first I intended to do a 2D animation, as that is what I am most comfortable with, but I found a rig for Sonic The Hedgehog from YouTube user TheBlueBlur. At first I was just playing around with it for fun, but then got the idea to use it for my body mechanics work. I asked Alec if I could use the model and he’d said it was fine, so I continued with it.
Since then I have experimented with the model to get used to it. This started with a jumping animation the whole class had done.
This was a fun way to practice with this rig and model, although the animation can be improved in the landing of the jump. Something that I really enjoyed about this rig was that had a lot of fine controls on different levels, so Sonic’s quills and ears can be animated with secondary action and follow-through. I continued to experiment with the model and decide to challenge myself by copying the poses seen in Yuju Uekawa Sonic art.
I did these, along with my own expressions for fun.
After all of this I was feeling quite confident with the rig and look forward to using it for my body mechanics animation and experimenting with all of the finer details of the rig.