After our induction talk on Animation Strategies, we opened up a pre-rigged model on Blender and were taught about IK and FK settings for moving the rigs. I was very confused and spent most of the time with my friend trying to figure out the settings – thankfully, Alec posted a more in-depth video about the matter and after taking some notes, I finally understood it.

FK stands for Forward Kinetics and means that the joints will move outward from the main parented part, meaning that moving the parent will also move everything after it. For example, moving the bicep will also move the forearm, hand and fingers. The child parts will remain stiff and positioned as they were (elbow will stay bent at the exact same angle, etc.).

IK stands for Inverse Kinetics, and it means the reverse of the above. The joints flow inward, from the child to the parent. Moving the hand up and down will also move the forearm and bicep and will provide less stiff, more organic movement. However, the angle of the elbow, for example, may form unnatural angles and you will need to fix this yourself.

This is the pose I made with the rig.

I found the posing difficult, but after making the notes and referencing this drawing by Kibbitzer, I adjusted it until I was satisfied. It still feels stiff, but I’m not sure how to improve. I think next time I’d choose a less dynamic pose until I’m more experienced.

Our assignment for next week was to make a simple walk cycle.

I referenced this drawing from the animator’s survival guide to help me do the poses.

The first thing I did was draw the head and body and name every pose so I could keep up with what I’d already done vs what I still needed to do. The body needed to twist and look natural, and I think I captured this well.

The second thing I did was try to make the head and body bob up and down as the person walked. I found this difficult at first, as I had sketched out rough legs while I was drawing the body, and they changed length every frame, making the up pose far too high and the down pose not low enough. I got rid of the legs and tried without them. I drew a guideline for the head’s height on the contact pose and used it as a medium point so I could make the head bounce evenly across the frames.

The next thing I did was add the legs and arms on a different layer in a different colour. Using the above image from the animators’ survival guide as a reference, I got it done fairly quickly. I had already done a rough version but deleted them, so I made sure not to make the same mistakes this time around. I tried to make sure they stayed consistently sized.

The fourth step was to add the back limbs in a different colour and another two layers. This step made me glad I had used layers for the front limbs as I needed to turn them off to make sure I didn’t mix up the two sets.

The last thing I did was put the head, body and limbs in one group and turn down the opacity so I could draw the outline. I added shading on the back limbs to separate them and make the animation less confusing.

This is the whole progression.