Before I decided to do a 3D walk cycle I did a rough 2D but at the time of starting it, I was struggling with the Art block and decided to switch to 3D for the walks and will attempt 2D again afterwards as I want to have a mix of both in my portfolio. I usually prefer doing 2D work as it is what I am most comfortable with however working on a 3D animation was a nice change from what I usually work with. I am still getting used to using blender even though we began using it last year there are still some areas I struggle to wrap my head around such as rigs however we got a premade model to use for the walks/runs if we chose to do them in blender. I also need to figure out ‘Smear frames’ as they are used in a majority if not all 2D animation and make everything flow much nicer, I struggle to understand them and need to look into how they work more during my own time in order to grow my skills for my next assignment and personal work.
I gathered a few different references for the basic walk cycle as I did not want to rely on the animator’s survival guide one entirely and also to help with arm movements as I struggled with the arms for a while, I was not sure on where to put them and a few test walks had the arms moving in the same direction as the legs and it looked very stiff and robotic which I did not want for the basic walk or the walk with personality.
While working on my walk cycles I looked at many different options both for the regular walk and the walk with personality, I decided to do my walk cycles in 3D using the ”Snow” model provided. I prefer 2D animation however I thought that diversifying my work slightly would help with my skills in Blender. I found it easier to animate with a premade model as I really struggle to create things such as rigs for my own models. I was unsure if I would do a more sluggish or energetic walk almost a jog. For my regular walk, I decided to do a basic walk with swinging arms and for the personality walk, I decided to make the character move like a zombie with their arms outstretched nearing the end of the walk to show that they could have spotted a person or something of interest. I also throughout the walk made the head move slightly to the side and the arms to stay mostly limp while also doing the swinging motion of the regular walk. My first version of my basic walk was very stiff as I struggled a little to understand which control moved what on the model and which to use for the motion I wanted such as the up and down movement of the body. The arms could use a little more tweaking in some areas such as the wrist as it does not move too much in the personality walk.
While animating the zombie walk I mainly used this image as a reference however I did not follow it entirely and made changes to make the character move in a slightly different way, with the body slightly tilted to the side and the head swinging up at the end of the cycle. One arm is lower than the other to make it less stiff and more limp like this person has lost control of their body and moves purely on instinct. During the walk, the feet move slightly inwards and shake to show that their balance is off due to whatever condition they may be in. I am really happy with the way the character dips at the beginning of the animation as it reminds me of some of the walkers acting in the show The Walking Dead, a hunched back and slowly lifting themself up and reaching out. There are some things I could have done differently to make the zombie walk better such as a limp or the body rolling backwards instead of leaning forwards. I also could have moved the fingers or face for more expression however I did not as the main focus was on the actual walk.
When I rendered my 3D walk cycles the textures do not appear however on the actual blender file the textures load fine both on the model and shader editor, I could not figure out how to fix this and rather than spend a lot of my time trying to figure out how to fix it I focused on continuing with my other walk cycle and both of my run cycles.
The feedback I got on my current walk cycles was quite helpful, I made things harder for myself by adding a lot of frames when there did not need to be as many for both the personality and regular walk, for the regular walk I should add on movement of the shoulders and more movement for the hips of the character along with lifting the head up more as they are looking down quite a lot during the walk and moving the arm positioning slightly as the swing is too far up. For the zombie walk, I could change areas so that the feet pivot on the ball of the foot rather than the heel.
I decided to do my run cycles in 2D and view from the side, animating in Toon Boom is still quite a challenge for me as it is so different from the animation programs I might use in my free time such as ”Rough Animator” Working with vector images is nice as making edits like size changes does not affect the quality at all. I enjoy a majority of the tools as they make editing a lot easier, however, the brushes are not the best in my opinion as I am used to a lot more variety with Procreate. The hardest part of creating animations in Toon Boom for me has to be doing clean lines, I find it difficult to make the animation not wiggle all over the place when doing the linework. I really like the transform tool of Toon Boom, I do not have to entirely redraw a body part if I made it too large I can transform it without losing line quality and it becoming pixelated.
For my run cycles, I decided on a more simple style so I did not spend a lot of time on unnecessary details when I could be making my animation flow smoother, I am quite happy with how the beginning of the run turned out (first image above) I had a few different versions of runs such as one where the character had both feet of the ground at the same time. I still need to add a few more frames in order to make it a full loop, I also need to figure out which frame rate looks the best. For the personality run, I am going to do something like they are ”frolicking” with swinging arms or holding their arms like a T-rex like I tend to find myself doing at times, it is a comfortable way to hold your arms. I am adding simple characters to the runs in order to keep the animation more focused on the movement than the character design. I am animating the runs at 24 frames and in twos.
For my personality run cycle, I settled on a run similar to Tina from Bobs Burgers and Ed from Ed, Edd n Eddy, with swinging arms and fast leg movements. I took inspiration from these characters as I enjoyed Ed, Edd n Eddy as a child and enjoyed the Bobs Burgers movie when I watched it earlier this year. For secondary animations, I gave them an imp like tail and horns, the regular run is a yellow rabbit with a long tuft of hair covering the eyes. It was challenging to line the drawings as I am so used to only doing very sketch like animations, it is just a style I am more comfortable with. I can be too hard on myself when it comes to good line art in animation or still drawings so I tend to lean on the more sketchy side, I did test a little with lineless colours for the animation however it looked very strange so I just stuck with plain black line art. There are certain areas I could have done differently such as the horns on the personality run could line up slightly better with the position on the frames before hand or the tail movement could have been ever so slightly smoother.
Overall I really enjoyed this assignment as difficult as it was for me at times, as frustrating as it was at the time I am glad I did my walks in 3D as it was something I would usually never do as I am just more comfortable with 2D animation in general and would do the odd animation in my free time using Rough animator rather than a program like Toon Boom or blender. Both of which I am excited to learn more about and how to use different tools that may help my animation process become smoother and slightly less stressful for the next assignment or even personal work. With my first 2D animation I made it quite simple as I was unsure if I had the skills to add a lot of detail and stuck to something I knew I could do it is a very basic yellow rabbit with a fringe covering their eyes where as when I started on my personality run I was slightly more confident in my skills and added more detail such as clothing and a tail for secondary movements rather than slight movements in the ears for the first animation. I know that next time I do have the skills to create a more detailed animation and I should push myself more in future to try things I may not be so sure about in both the 2D and the 3D as my 3D walks could also have more detail in things like hand movements and small changes such as where the foot falls and hip/shoulder movements which would add a lot to my zombie walk especially.