Animation Strategies
Introduction
This blog goes over on how I went and researched walk cycles from 2D to 3D. It also goes over the progress of me making my own 3D animated Walk cycle and how i got my final product that i later uploaded on Sync sketch. I also have my refection at the bottom of the page stating how I though about the process and struggles I may had on the task of making my 3D walk cycles.
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Research on Walk Cycle
We look and studied in class the 2001 Book called Richard Williams animation survival kit. In this book it gives the examples of how the character poses move and timelines of the pose in great detail images drawing. Richard Williams was the creative mind behind a handful of Walt Disney and Steven Spielberg blockbuster animation and has a great understanding on how animation films worked. Had worked in this career for 50 year and had gone on win 3 Oscars, 3 British Academy Awards and over 250 other international awards from his animations.
It also looks and told about the important 12 principles of animation.
- Squish and stretch
- Anticipation
- Staging
- Straight ahead action and pose to pose
- Follow through an overlapping actions
- Ease in, ease out
- Arcs
- Secondary actions
- Timing
- Exaggeration
- Solid drawing
- Appeal
These principles are important for animators for when making a foundation of a good animation.
Refences For Walking cycle is in: Richard Williams animation survival kit Book
My personal sketch of a direct copy of Richard Williams walk cycle to better understand it and to use while working on my 2D drawing on Loom Doom. The work of having one of the legs or arm shaded in black is to show that its the opposite side of the body. In this it is the left leg. This also shows how people body movement moves everything in the body form head to toe. This is shown in the head bobbing up and down the straight line.
Sketches
2D animation short practice (Loon doom)
This a short animation of a 2D walk cycle I tried doing on loon Doom before trying out the 3D rigs. I try to demonstrate my understanding of the example of Richard Williams walk cycle.
3D Posing
Learning 3D Blender rigs – (SNOW)
Downloaded a 3D Blender Rig called “Snow” and I started to play around with the rigs and learning what each thing do. I started making my 3D rig into a pose for him Running scared. I later then look at the female vision rig of Snow called “Rain” and preferred to work with the rain rig.
Practice 3D (Posing My charater)
3D Refence for the walk cycle
I used a Refence video of a blender 3D model video of a female charter walk on YouTube because I had decided to use the 3D Rain rig. I looked at where the placement of the feet went and how the body moved along the animation cycle.
link for video ref : (81) Female – Walk cycle – YouTube
3D Normal walk (Default) that I made
First animation of a walk cycle is good. Have to make a handful of changes. For one the speed of the walk is a bit too slow. There is a slight jump from the knee when the leg hits the ground. I need to work on the upper part of the body to help create more movement. I still think it was a good first attempt and hopefully it will improve
Re-doing the walk cycle.
I speed up the Walk cycle walking because it looked too slow and was more a personality walk. By closing the keyframes closer together made my walk faster. I also made more movement in the upper body by moving the shoulders side to side. I think by making it fast made it more jumpy but making it too slow looks too similar to my personality walk of the sassy walk cycle.
After Sync sketch review from the lecture
Walk cycle -> RE – walk render 12 (syncsketch.com)
3D Personality Walk (Sassy)
Refences video
I grabbed some refences videos again to look at to help my Personality walk and decided to pick a confident sassy walk cycle. I looked at the videos and looked at how the body language What’s telling people that it was confident. A Good way of showing body confidence I had learnt is by having the head slightly tilt it upwards looking towards the air tells people that the character is brave, confident or smug. I also decided on making my character have one of her hands on her hips Even though I can find any good reference videos other walk cycle having their hand on their hip I personally thought by doing this it would create more a personality and I also wanted to test out using Inverse Kinematic (IK) keys on the Blender rig.
The Refence Links:
(3) CinemaStock – Greenscreen – Female in red dress walking with hand on hip – YouTube
(3) Hand on Hip Walk Cycle – YouTube
Sassy Walk
When making this walk cycle I purposely dragged the walk out longer and having a slow pace to the walk cycle. I feel like it add to the personality of the walk. I tried to convey the feeling and emotion of the character being sassy. I did this by looking at the refence and copied the body language and facial expression it should be doing to represent the given emotion.
Re- doing the personality walk (Sassy walk cycle)
Here my final product of the sassy walk cycle.I’m pretty happy at how it turned out and I feel confident that this shows my ability to use the Inverse Kinematic (IK) keys. I spent a lot of time on having all the body parts to move smoothly and
Here is a better view of the facial expression I made. Even the face emotion is slowed down to the pace of the walk to give personality of a laziness, calmness and overconfident. I had the upper eye lids rigs down by 40% for her starting position and only moved it down a bit when the bottom eye lip rig went to create a light blinking emotion.
Run cycle
I Looked at Run Cycle video and particularly like the run in Team Fortress 2 run animation of the character named “scout.” I also used image refences from Blackboard and YouTube videos that also had good refence images. I liked the Image refences a bit more and more each time I did a new walk cycles because I was able to see the poses of the refence character while working on the 3D rig of Rain at the same time.
Refences used for my run cycle
(1) Run Cycle Reference – YouTube
Image refence given in Blackboard.
Ref Link : 0.22 ;Animating a run cycle in Blender [tutorial by Dillongoo] – YouTube
I looked at a run cycle on YouTube by Bloop Animation called “Animating a run cycle in Blender [tutorial by Dillon goo ]”. I watched his animation and really like the 3D Blender image he used and decided to take it and used it for my photo refence. I also did the same for the refence photo that was given to us in Blackboard and that i seen in class when we were being taught how to pose our character in the blender timeline.
Normal Run cycle. (Light Jog)
(First attempt trial)
2rd attempt
3th attempt
4th attempt
5th attempt
I went thought many re-try’s on working on this one going back and making changes. Making the the timing of the legs running back and forth. I really struggled in the upper body to make it leaning forward and still have the arms following and swinging smoothly in the cycle.
After Sync sketch review from the lecture
Run Cycle -> RE – Run 012 (syncsketch.com)
Personality Run cycle (Scared run)
I used Woody from the Toy Story Movie franchise for my personality run. I collected refences videos from movies and even looked at early testing animation of the character.
Refence video : Woody Run – YouTube
other Ref. Time stamp: 0:33 Toy Story – Early Test Animation – YouTube
Other Ref Time stamp: 0:20 Toy Story | Escaping Scud And The Moving Truck Scene – YouTube
The toy model is very floppy and is not a normal run for a normal human anatomy. So when I rigged this I closely followed the toy movement and the same facial expression emotion. The run cycle personality goal was to try replicate someone running scared. The Body language. I tried to look at all the refence videos on how to portrayed the expression of someone scared running. 
First attempt
Second attempt.
Third attempt
After Sync sketch review from the lecture
Run Personality Cycle -> RE – Run personality render 002.2 (Toy story Woody) (syncsketch.com)
Overall review on the 3D final result.
Sync sketch Walk Cycle updated
Link to Sync Sketch: https://syncsketch.com/invite/MzFhMDM4MT
This is my sync Sketch work named “Daniel Animation” where i have two Projects named “Walk cycle” and “Walk Cycle 2 updated”. In the updated project file is shows my final and finished design of the animation cycles of the character and its personalities walks cycles.
This was a good website that allows me to show a front view and side video of my animation cycles, displaying my overall work in this project. I had been given reviews by the lectures in class and they typed it out onto my laptop. This is why the reviews where under my name account and not the lecture on the website. I also put my blender files on one drive so people can look at it.
Link to One Drive Blender flies : Walk cycle blender files
Refection of my walk cycle animation task
Overall I think that I did a decent work on the final product of the animation cycle. I put a lot of time and effect and I really did struggle at points to improve the animation cycles. A good example is the speed pace was always difficulty for me at times. Even when using graphic editor to try easing in and out of key frame speeds. I think that timing was a very important point of this task and the ability to make recommended changes by my lectures was also very important. I definitely feel like I have grasped all the principles of doing a walk cycle animation and in the future I see my self being able to improve in Walk cycles animation over time.
Bibliography
https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/animation/discover/principles-of-animation.html
https://www.animationandvideo.com/2015/09/book-review-animators-survival-kit.html
https://www.skillshare.com/en/blog/21-best-animation-tips-for-beginners-and-beyond/
http://www.theanimatorssurvivalkit.com/biography.html#:~:text=In%20the%201990%27s%20he%20gave%20the%20Richard%20Williams%27,by%20the%20best-selling%20The%20Animators%20Survival%20Kit%20%282001%29.