Research, References and Reflection

Jump and Catch

Sync Sketch: https://syncsketch.com/sketch/N2E4ODVlOGRm/

A running jump animation is an animation that depicts a character transitioning from running to jumping. It basically involves the character building up momentum through running and then propelling themselves off the ground to perform a jump.

For this animation I looked closely at football ball catches as references also vertical jumps. I combined the key poses from running with the key poses of anticipation, stretch and impact with jumping. Verticals jumps aim for projection of height compared to long jumps which are more forward in their trajectory. This animation is more of a mix of the two. In verticals jumps the arms are swung back to anticipate the upward spike.

 

I looked closely at toonbooms jump deconstruction and tried to match the poses to that. As starting references for blocking it out. As for the timing and energy, the travel of the character in the air is pretty linear while the travel down and up is faster for the general idea. I animated mostly in twos, pose to pose.

 

Furthermore I tried to keep in mind of when doing this animation aswell as keep in mind of the body arcs, my curves, I tried to keep them in C shapes  to keep the fluidity of the animation consistent.  Common mistake I’ve seen is having unrealistic arcs. Since im using real life references I didn’t want the poses to be too extreme as it doesn’t translate too well on the rig And whenever the body line was straightish  it was for the catch.

 

For the secondary animations like the hair I kept it bouncy and I used poses from the pose library til animate the hands movements and facial expressions very simply. Again I used the graph editor to smooth out the passing and inbetween frames.

The things that I am happy about this jump is  the fluidity and timing I think is well paced and it’s travel I wanted is executed well compared to the references I pulled online. I also like the poses from front view. I look care posing the knees during build up and aswell as the posing for the feet in contact.

Things that I would improve for next time is to improve my use of “child of” constraint. Which i used for the ball animation. The contact of the hand to ball clips through. And isn’t cupping it perfectly during the catch. For next time I would go back and adjust this. However due to bad time management. I ran out. I think in the end my jump came out will and with a little bit more tweaking it could be a bit better.

i used this constraint targetted it to the snow rig, then added the wrist as the main bone then set as inverse. it worked but didnt work exactly as i hoped for. next time i would ad a rig to the object like a masterbone so that it would be easier and more uniform in movement.