In this blog post, It’ll just be mainly the step by step process along with the reference videos I’ve used. I’m struggling to use Toon Boom so I was allowed to use Clip, I’ve tried out toon boom for all the class exercises and to be honest it just didn’t tickle the right places of the brain. All these characters’ design have been nerfed heavily to allow me enough time to get them done ☻

 

WALK

My main reference was just the first few seconds of the video where the man was swinging his arms pretty lightly. The timing may be different in each step since I have played around and change things up to make it have a smoother flow.

This process is repeated for all the other cycles where I animate the limbs all in separate layers so I can easily adjust them after as well change up the timing for certain limb just so it appears less stiff.

Details were added through 3 different layers since I also played around on the timing on the small details, this is where I realised I may have used a character that is loaded with too much small details.

The one above was my final vanilla walk until I had received feedback in class on the hand twitching strangely at the front. It was a pretty easy fix of tweaking the arm and hand so it’s much more smoother and less distracting by that single twitch on the hand.

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WALK WITH PERSONALITY

The personality walk is pretty simple, I think I should’ve used my simpler art style but we ball. To understand how to capture the emotion from the women, I did a lil rough study(?) before slapping down my rough animation and adding onto it.

From this rough we can see the blue leg doesn’t hang at the front as long as the green, this was pointed out when I had ask for feedback in class by Chloe and also a lecture later on the day. I was able to play around with the timing and adding in a few extra frames to give it something that had a better flow.

Near the end when I thought I was good, I received feedback on the head turns to the left too hard so I had to readjust a few frames to make it less aggressive and this was the result. Due to lack of time I wasn’t able to fully redo the turn but it’s at least an improvement.

 

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RUN

The reference is mainly just for me to focus on the arm and leg movements, in this run I feel like I Should’ve left the head facing forehead instead of swinging it side by side much like my reference video but this is what I have created.

I had sent a message to Aodhan a message to see what could be fix from my rough, one of which was giving the foot some curve so it appears less stiff and adding in an extra frame for the arm so it doesn’t flick in front for the yellow arm.

After fixing my problems, I was also decided to play around with the timing making it slower. Again, this was to make it less stiff in my eyes since the equal spacing made it really awkward.

When I had ask for feedback in class there wasn’t any comment on this so I just left it as it is and hurried to get my run with personality done since I started to fall behind. ☻

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Run With Personality

Trying to find a personality run was a struggle than actually animating this, instead of finding one reference I decided to combine the two to create an awkward gardener carrying a pot of plant and his watering can. From the first video I mainly focus on the steps (2:54) while from the Jetstream Sam I wanted to focus on the arm movement on the sword.

From this rough animation, it looked pretty dog water. I thought why not just redo the arms and make him carry a watering can just by itself by mainly referencing the samurai run.

I went ahead and asked my lectures for some feedback that I can then try and apply into my work, most of which was adding lil details to give it more emotions. So I took the idea of adding sweat and a little bit of splash in the water can to hopefully give it enough personality.

This is the final result for my run with personality, something I had struggling coming up with a rough for a solid 2 days before I landed on something I’m okay with. I wish I could’ve added more into the details but due to lack of time, this was the best I could do for all of these animations. It was quite a struggle but in the end I’m really happy with how they came out.

In the end, I feel like I can understand on how to look at my references and use the more effectively such as taking certain screen shots of action to draw over or even just draw the key frames, write down some notes on the action or use simple arrows to indicate movement and connections to these movements. It’s a little rusty but hopefully with time I can get better at this!