This post will act as my final summary of my Animation strategies Assignment 1 “Animation Walks and Runs”. For the general summary of my activity during this assignment, in the week prior to the assignment’s beginning I decided to take a few practice attempts at creating walk cycles because I am aware that walk/ run cycles are some of the most important animation principles for animators to learn due to how frequent we will be animating characters walking and or running in the industry so I just wanted to get a head start especially since before the semester began I invested in a copy of Richard William’s “Animation Survival Kit” (Faber and Faber 2001) thanks to recommendations from my lecturers. So, I created a pair of prototype Walk cycles using the principles from the survival kit, in retrospect I can now say that these pieces were not structured correctly. For one, When I sketched out the frames, I was not only planting the foot and arm placement purely by eyeballing it, I also used a framework that was simply too complicated which lead to me making more mistakes than creating something more fluent. another aspect that is a downfall for the first two walk cycles is that I only animated the core keyframes on twos, this makes them look more mechanical and faster than they should be.
Another slight hardship I encountered towards the beginning was a transfer in the software used for animating the walk and run cycles for the final submission, prior to this module all 2d animations I developed were created on Krita due to me becoming accustomed to its tools and how the software functioned. But one of the key parts of the curriculum was to develop animations on professional software used within the industry, in this case Harmony (or toonboom). I honestly found the transference tough at first as I could not fully understand the properties of this software and was also under-pressure to finish everything in time for the deadline. However, I reasoned that the only way I was going to improve with using industry software, was to experiment with industry software. So, I developed a prototype walk cycle to get a feel for how Harmony worked and in hindsight it was a very rough outcome, this is primarily due to me not fully understanding the properties of the software. So, following the first attempt, I practiced a new method of traditionally sketching out the keyframes and then importing them into the Toon boom files as a reference to draw over and I also exercised the use of in-between frames to improve how smooth the final animations were.
Using this method, it resolved many of the issues and difficulties I had with the previous attempts I made at animating walk cycles, the cycle I developed was an animation with emotion in the form of a character walking while crouched down. Although I was quite impressed with the outcome of this practice, my lecturers had one main point that could be improved and that was the leg movement in relation to the torso’s positioning as it was described as being too low to the ground in relation to how much the legs were moving which in retrospect I can see their reasoning for this feedback and I had every intention of improving upon this feedback with my future animations.
After I completed all of these practices and prototypes, I then began work on the finalized run and walk cycles. The first final attempt I made was on an emotive walk which in this case was basically a strut while carrying a sword over the character’s shoulder, for this and every other final animation I have done for the assessment, I developed a simple character design based on the framework I had developed for my final animations to keep it consistent. The methods I used, the sketching processes and referencing I used can be seen in the individual blog entries which I have created for each of the finalized animations as well as the prototypes to show their entire development processes. The first finalized walk cycle I developed turned out to be quite successful and seemed impressive. However, its first rendition was not perfect, the biggest problem was the amount of waist movement as pointed out by my lecturers which was too distracting, I would rightly correct this problem and I can say I’m satisfied with the end result.
After this, I would develop the default walk cycle to show my basic understanding with the mechanics of how a walk cycle must be animated, so I was able to develop this animation easily and the only thing I would improve is trying to keep the body proportions consistent between frames but I’m sure this will improve with more experience. Along with the basic walk cycle, I decided to develop another personality walk, this time I went for a more defeated or sad walk, I had quite a bit more experience with developing walks at this point and felt more confident when developing this walk cycle, but that does not necessarily mean this cycle had no faults. The main fault that is present with the defeated walk is that between 3 of the frames (Towards the left foot contact stage of the walk), the left foot seems to go out slightly too far and then quickly snap back into place. But aside from this slight error, I was satisfied with the outcome.
As the three walk cycles were being developed, I also simultaneously began work on the two run cycles. Due to being a bit more stretched for time at the point where I began the development of the run cycles, as well as having past experience from the walk cycles I had developed, I felt I would be okay to translate the skills I had got from the walks I had developed to then work on my run cycles. This time around I started with the basic run basing it on the key-frame references once again found In “the Animator’s Survival Kit” (Richard Williams/ Faber and Faber 2001) and I found this to be quite easier than the walks as both the runs were done on ones, using only the key-frames so I was able to crank them out quickly, The end result of the basic Run was satisfactory with the only adjustment being needed was the placement of the legs being differentiated slightly from each other to make the run look less mechanical and mirrored But after that I was satisfied with the outcome.
When I began thinking about what I could do for my run with personality, I was immediately reminded of a specific animation found in the video game “Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam”(Nintendo 2015). In this game there is a specific run cycle which I wanted to try and recreate as I thought it was a perfect example of a run with personality and emotion behind it (More details can be seen in the individual posts). I was able to sketch out the key frames easily following the sketch I developed for the basic run with some slight adjustments to the leg placement as well as a complete reworking of the movement of the upper torso. I then got the initial framework as well as the final animation created relatively quickly and was quite satisfied with the result. The only thing I wanted to improve was the arm movement, because at one point in the run cycle the arms reach the same position at around the same time between two frames, this was easily fixed thanks to a suggestion of simply adjusting one of the arms a bit to differ their placement between the two frames and this seemed to fix the problem I had with the run cycle which concluded my coursework development for the assignment.
If I was to try this assignment again, the main aspect I would do differently would be to experiment more with various types of walks and runs which differ quite substantially from each other in terms of; posing, speed, weight, personality etc. This would naturally give me a bit more experience at creating more individualized walk and run cycles for characters and obtain a more versatile understanding of the theory behind creating run and walk cycles and how I can adjust these mechanics to convey personality much more effectively. I intend to perform further experiments with developing run and walk cycles following this assignment, as this is a mandatory skill for the animation industry, On top of this, I may also try to experiment more with developing run and walk cycles through other animation medias particularly 3D animation, as 3D animation generally, is something I need to work on quite a bit and I want to improve my skills with animating 3D character rigs which will better my chances in starting a career in the animation industry due to having a more versatile skill set in both 2D and 3D animation.
Williams, R. (2001). The animator’s survival kit. (Pg:177) London: Faber And Faber.
Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam (2015). Nintendo 3DS [Game]. Nintendo, Japan