For weeks 4-5 we started learning how to take our characters from a walk cycle into the run cycles! This became quite fun to experiment with as we went through the basic break downs of the run cycles and how they were easier to learn than walk cycles were due to their much easier to understand poses in the: contact, down, passing, up and contact flow. One of the references for these poses that I used was Preston Blair’s reference of a basic run cycle as well as the example given during class which was this reference as shown below:
Taking these poses into consideration I took to drawing out my own poses for my basic run cycle I would be doing with my shark dog character Kaimana (As I believed that she would have some very fun secondary action to do on her bobbing shark tail!) After spending most of the class drawing in these poses and making sure her tail looked like it bobbed flawlessly I felt very accomplished with myself… that was until I found that I would need to do her arms which caused a feeling of dread to wash over me as I was unsure how on earth I would do her arms…
(Video taken after the arms had been drawn so lines are erased in places…)
I had spent so long already getting the basic body movements done that I felt scared with ruining it when I did the arms however I pressed forward with it and before I knew it I had a full (Sketchy) run cycle which I had a bit of issues looping the arms however I didn’t really mind this as much as I knew I could try to learn what I’d done wrong and try to fix it for my next walk cycle I would do.
After I had finished this run cycle sketches I found myself feeling quite proud and happy with how it looked, However at this point I was also beginning to panic and dread started hitting me again as I realised our deadline was fast approaching and I still had a run with personality to do, a bog standard walk cycle to do and all the blogs for this assignment so far! yes Hi, Late blog writing. Anyway, After going through my usual panic attacks I normally go through and surviving the flood of heart attacks that follow, I finally sat down and started brainstorming what sort of run cycle I could possibly do that would look like it had an ounce of personality and that my dear friends, is when inspiration struck me like a tonne of bricks to the face. My saviour had come to the rescue. Here on my laptop screen, sat in his amazing glory, was one of my characters named Fiel who was staring me in the face from his profile on my Toyhouse. That’s when I KNEW; I had to make a drunken run for my glorious deadbeat drunk bat. So it began. I started putting down the ground work for Fiel’s run cycle and while… yea it kinda looks very odd.. But! it definitely has personality? For a run cycle with personality I personally would say it is a good try and I look forward to trying to work on it and many other run cycles to come to grow my skills so much more.
With the first ground work laid out now, it came time to do the movements of the arms which in itself will be a difficult task indeed. The examples I had been looking at for all seemed quite clumsy and off-balanced with the arms moving quite a lot to steady the person, for example being very outstretched and wobbling a lot as the body is constantly almost falling over.
Now I guess would be a good time to talk about the sort of “References” I used to try to inspire my drunken boy’s run cycle which if I’m honest… I didn’t pick just ONE reference to look at. I mostly googled drunk runs and scrolled down through the many gifs that showed up to show me the glorious stumbling fools, such as one from the actor of Doctor Who of him stumbling and basically falling and just BARELY catching himself.
Another fun “reference” I found was one of someone drunk and running from a police officer that fell over 2 railings but continued getting up and running away. Granted when I was actually animating him he seemed much more stable than my references especially for my arms but I decided to give him a drink in his hand because I felt it fit his character much more.