And now for the final cycle!
I mentioned in a previous post that I decided to make the personality for this run cycle one that is cold and in a hurry, and I think I would also use “frantic” to describe it as well, especially after having completed it.
I used a lot of similar references for this run as I have linked and shown in my previous post!
Before starting on this run, I drew out a base to work off of in Clip Studio Paint:
As you can see, this character design is a little different to the one I had previously. It’s still a mouse, but instead of an umbrella, rain hat and rain coat, it just has a coat and scarf. I figured this design would more easily convey that it is supposed to be cold in her environment. Also, if she had an umbrella and it was raining, there would be less incentive to be running in the first place unless i made the weather conditions very harsh, and I didn’t think I had the time to execute an animation like that.
Plus, I thought the scarf would be fun to animate!
I started by importing the drawing of the mouse into ToonBoom, making it a vector image and resizing it the way I wanted it in the program.
I was hesitant at first because the leg looked a bit off, but I decided to trust the process again, and recalled how in my previous run animation, I was able to adjust the legs to better suit the rotation of the body to make things look more natural.
I exported the first one incorrectly .. however, with these two I was testing whether I wanted an extra separate pose for the mouse to be in the air. I wanted the run to be a little more rapid this time, as I felt my previous run felt a bit more like a jog, but a faster timing here would better suit the personality.
This was my attempt so far! I got a little confused with the leg placement and the hips, because although the leg movement should counter the arm movement, because of the body movement side to side I felt it made more sense for the legs to come forward as the body twisted that way? But it just looked a little odd, so I ended up changing this.
Adding in the arms was really fun and a change of pace! It was interesting to try drawing the arms in a more 3D sort of space, and think about how they look as the body turns around. I also added in the head movement, which I was decently happy with!
I think the ear movement turned out pretty well too – it does move a lot, however in this case I feel like it actually matches the amount of up and down movement going on, as well as adding to the personality aspect of the animation. The fluffy hair was a little difficult to get right, but I tried to implement some stretching as the head came up or down, and let the hair “puff out” a little at the top.
A lot going on here!
I added secondary action to the scarf, which I ended up REALLY liking, actually! I think it might be my favourite so far.
I attempted secondary action with the tail, and I made the movement mirror the scarf rather than be the exact same to add a bit more variety to the animation.
I initially kept the mouth and eyes on the same layer as the head, so that when I moved the head and adjusted its rotation, I wouldn’t have to worry about the eye and mouth placements later. Then, I copied and pasted the eyes and mouth to a new layer, while deleting them from the head layer. This moved them to a new layer for me to edit on, while keeping them in the same position that they were. There’s probably a less convoluted way to go about that, but it worked for me!
I made the mouse look down at the puddle out of concern that it’s making her colder and more uncomfortable, and I made her puff out a bit of steam once in a while to show not only how fast she’s running, but how cold the temperature is.
I considered and tried to make her body shiver, but it didn’t end up working very well. In fairness, your muscles don’t tend to shiver when you’re running and your body is already being heated up by that action.
The puddle I am very proud of! It initially didn’t look so great as I just tried to wing it, but I found this reference that really helped me get it right.
https://syncsketch.com/sketch/Mzg5NWNlY2Fl/
I was amazed that I managed to replicate it decently well, because I usually don’t do so well with particle effects.
^ Run cycle after some cleanup and adjustments!
In hindsight, however, and whenever I go back and polish the run, I think I should make the drops follow behind, because although the character is technically staying in one place, this effect assumes that a character is still moving forward, and it’s just the camera that is following the character – therefore, it would make more sense for the puddle drops to fall behind, not fall in the same place.
Otherwise though, I think I’m happiest with this cycle out of all of them – which is surprising, because as I mentioned, I generally struggle with run cycles! However, I think I managed to get it looking fairly smooth, I like the arcs and the secondary actions, and I managed to get some elements cleaned up that make it look really nice in my opinion.
I definitely learnt a lot from this and from my other cycles, and I’m eager to receive more feedback for them!