Since we had time off for Summer, I decided to work on my 2D animation skills and try and get more comfortable with my digital drawing software.
I went ahead and used this video as a reference for my walking animations:
I went and used Procreate for the following, as it was my most comfortable software to use. This allowed me to focus on capturing the movements and spacing of each body part without worrying about the finer details. These were all very relaxed movement studies and I enjoyed seeing how adjusting the position of the hips, shoulders and feet was able to change the personality and story of the walk.
I then wanted to try using one of my relaxed studies to create a character walking. This is where I learnt that taking time is very important when approaching animation, as I jumped straight in before any sort of planning resulting in some major inconsistencies and issues (which I have made notes of around the final product). I also realised that Procreate really isn’t the best for animation for me past the rough stage, and I learnt a lot about just letting myself slow down and take time to achieve the results I want.
With some walk cycles done, I went and attempted a Run cycle. For this I wanted to move away from Procreate and familiarise myself with Clip Studio. Using what I learnt from before I took my time watching the movements of a run from the tutorial below and translated these into a rough block out of Vi. Since this was a practice I didn’t spend too long on clean line art, just looked to keep the shapes consistent and details roughly in the right spot, before moving onto flat colour and some lighting.
Once I was done and had some time to check over the final version, I made some notes on what to look out for in the next animation I started.
Overall, this was a rewarding practice and I can see growth in just this short amount of time! In future I will look to incorporate games and other media to inspire myself and study from.