Reflection

In animated Strategies our goal was to learn how to animate walk cycles and run cycles on either Blender, using the Rain/Snow rigs, or Toon Boom. We were to animate a default walk cycle, a walk cycle with personality, a default run cycle and a run cycle with personality. I chose to stick with animating on blender as I had more practice with it compared to Toon Boom. The first time I used Toon boom I used a graphics tablet that had no screen and proved to be very frustrating. I wish I had gotten more practice with Toon Boom but for this assignment I thought it was best to focus on Blender.

The posing of the walk cycle was easy to understand, however I struggled with the legs as the knees would go out of control, twisting to the side. I played around in the graph editor trying to fix them but the graph editor is an area I need more practice on. I really enjoyed animating the snooty and angry walk cycles as I got more practice with the legs as well as animating the facial features. I had the most fun with the snooty walk as I wanted to emulate confidence and an elitist attitude. The angry walk cycle I could have made the shoulders more exaggerated, especially on the pre-stomp, to convey more power/energy in the pose. I messed up on the legs, they look snappy and unnatural on the pre-stomp pose.

The default run cycle was interesting, I found it relatively easier as I didn’t run into the same problems as I did with the legs but I feel they could have been faster. In the first run cycle I tilted the model’s head slightly as it was leaping in the air and making contact but it didn’t appear animated on the rendered video, I also think the ponytail was too fast paced. In the most recent run cycle I fixed the hair and the head bob. For the scared run cycle I wish I recorded a video to use as a reference as I felt the upper part of the model was too rigid. I slightly moved the arms back and forth to create movement, as well as bending the fingers for aerodynamics.

I feel I’ve really come a long way from when I first started using Blender last year. I’ve struggled with a few features but I can see how I’ve improved and how the walk and run cycle animations helped. It was interesting how to make the walk and run cycles on 3D Software compared to drawing them by hand on 2D software. My struggles mainly stemmed from the graph editor and the rigs in the legs but these areas can be improved on with more practice. For next time I would like to record videos to use for reference as my animations lacked liveliness, the reason I hadn’t was poor planning and time management on my hand. The videos would have been quick to record, I could have asked one of my classmates to help with recording during/in-between class or used references from secondary sources.

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