Research and Reflection
Animation strategies was a very fun and interesting class. I had a lot of fun experimenting with different types of walk cycles, and I learned a lot.
The first personality walk cycle I did was a timid walk, referencing this video 100 ways to walk. I made this using a screen tablet and toon boom, this was before I learned how to add a white background and so had to change the line colour when I exported the walk to be able to see the animation.
This is a basic walk I attempted. I used the reference shown, and a drawing tablet without a screen, on toon boom. This presented some problems, as I hadn’t used a non screen tablet in a while so I was a bit rusty. This coupled with using a new program made it so it was hard to make things I was happy with. Some problems with this on reflection, I have the feet on the same plane so it is hard to see the movement, The reference doesn’t straighten the legs fully ever so it makes the walk look a little strange, it almost has a skip like effect.
I also made some walk cycles in blender using the Rain and snow model. This one is the Rain rig, and the walk was taught by Rachel Dixion. I had a lot of fun making this one as it was not too hard, and pretty quick to make. I didn’t really understand the IK/FK controls though, they confuse me. I know they are simple in one is lead by the wrist and feet and the other is lead by joints, but when I try to use them, they don’t do what I want/ expect them to do.
This is when I attempted a Skip cycle, I didn’t know at this point that the shown reference was only half a cycle, and when I played it, it didn’t look correct so I added some frames so it at least made a little more sense but obviously I didn’t do it entirely correctly. However, because of this mistake I became more conscious of the fact that the walk cycle references are not always full cycles, they are mostly half cycles that you have to flip.
This is a walk that I tried to follow taught by Alec. I tried to follow the video tutorials by Alec and I think I was having an off day as the videos were not making sense to me and started to frustrate me. I spent a few hours on this and only got the legs done. This really knocked my confidence as I really enjoyed making the walk taught by Rachel Dixion, but this one was not fun in the slightest.
This is a walk my friend Chloe talked me through making. After struggling so much with the previous walk and seeing me getting frustrated Chloe offered to try to help me, she made a walk with me and showed me how to do it, in a way that made sense, I still had some problems, but this was much easier for me than following the videos. This really helped as I was getting so frustrated to the point that I didn’t want to be on blender anymore that day. However this day solidified I would rather make my animations in 2D rather than 3D.
After learning about the fact that the references where half cycles I wanted to draw out some of the walk cycles to help decide what I wanted my final walks to be as I find it hard to look at the references and know how the walk will work. This is mainly because I have Aphantasia and so I can not picture things in my head, so If i want to get an idea of how the references look, i have to look them up having already been animated, or animate them myself.
Walk- The walk was pretty easy at this point as I had done a few walk cycles already. The only real problem I had with this was that I kept forgetting to change the scene settings so it kept exporting at 24 frames per second which made it too fast as I was working in 18 frames per second. The knee pops a little though which is a problem I have that seems to keep coming up. This one was also very symmetrical in movement, so the corresponding poses were direct copies of each other and the gap between the feet is too large.
Double bounce walk- I made this in class, we followed a tutorial by Aodhan, I really enjoyed making this, as didn’t know what a double bounce walk was when I heard the name or saw the reference. But then I saw a video of the walk and thought it looked so fun, they look so happy. I think might have exaggerated the bounce a little too much on the head specifically as it feels like it moves to much, but I really like the little bounce this walk cycle has, so I might use this one eventually for something, but I didn’t want to use it for this assignment, as it was a walk that was taught in class, and i wanted to do something new.
Strut- I liked this cycle, It made me think of a mayor like character walking through the town towards their office, again I have the problem of directly reflecting the corresponding poses so it looks a little stiff, this is a problem I have for all these tests.
Shuffle- I liked the reference for this one as I thought it looked fun but in practice and this could be entirely my fault, I didn’t like this walk, I think it is cause i messed up the head and neck a little, but it is slightly too much of an exaggerated walk for me to want to pick it. my art style/ the style I wanted to draw in, doesn’t mesh that well with overly cartoony movement in my opinion,
Sneak- I had a similar problem with sneak, that I had with shuffle. In that it felt too cartoony for what I wanted to do, I did really like this walk though, I thought It would be really good for something a little more “chibi”, or simplified, but I struggle with simple characters as they feel like they are “empty” they feel like they need more, but then that makes them not simple.
1st attempt at a run- I didn’t know that it was meant to be on 1’s and so did it on 2’s which makes it look more like a jog than a run. I really liked this one though. It made me think about making my personality run a little slowed down, as it feels a bit more like they are taking bounds rather than strides.
Run on 1’s- I redid the run, as it was meant to be on 1’s, I had the problem again of the corresponding poses being the same, which caused a flicker effect and so I changed it, This is where I learnt that that was something I should try to avoid doing. I do like this one, mainly the flicking of the hands. It was something very simple but I really like what it adds.
I then started to finalise what my walks and runs would look like.
My vanilla walk. I blocked out the basic walk cycle but more in my style of anatomy, instead of the more blob like blocking out I did for the testing phase. I added the little hand flick, as that was something I really enjoyed in my testing phase, and wanted to keep.
My personality walk referenced 16 personality walk. I wanted to make a regal walk, of someone being escorted and this one was almost exactly what I wanted. So I used this one as a base, and adjusted little things to make it more the way I wanted.
Vanilla run. I blocked out the basic run cycle, but added a bit too much turn to the arms and legs, I thought it would make it look like the character was pushing themselves to run harder, but it looks a little strange especially the foot coming towards camera, as it makes the foot hard to read. and so that was something i had to fix.
Personality run, This one didn’t have 1 reference it was a mix of different things, it was the base of the normal run with a sprint start, I used this a s a reference sprint and the ending slow down, was blocked out by myself trying to make the motions. I knew I wanted the arms to windmill at the end to help them catch themselves, but couldn’t find reference so I just slowly took the arms in a circle, the front one pauses a little at the end, where I thought it would look like them catching themselves, but it mostly just looks like a mistake frame.
I got some feedback on a few of these from Aodhan. For the walk cycle, the leg still pops on last frame, so I had to fix that. For the run cycle, I need to adjust The silhouettes more, as they are still too similar, and this is creating a flickering effect. For the personality walk, the pause in the middle is too long/ I need to change it so that the frames are not just repeats and instead are slightly different frames, the character shouldn’t stop, they should just slow down. I didn’t get feedback for the personality run at this point as it was still a work in progress.
A problem I kept having was that the arms and legs were too similarly posed on the corresponding poses. I am not sure why I kept having this problem, even when I changed them what I thought was a significant change they were still to similar.
I drew out the characters I would be using for my cycles, they are all NPC’s from my DND campaign, I thought it would be smart to use characters I already have so I don’t have to worry about creating brand new designs for 4 characters. The exception to this was Brent, as they didn’t have art made of them already so I didn’t fully know what they looked like but I knew their basic traits and details.
For the vanilla walk i referenced this video for the tail. whip
I then worked on adding clothes, and tails, ears, etc. for the secondary actions. These were not meant to be perfect, they where just block outs so I could understand the clothes, and keep them consistent.
Feedback for the cycles was
Brent’s walk- Add a straight leg just before contact, and a foot hold (on point) before take off.
Alantia’s walk- Tilt foot up a little on contact instead of flat.
Layton’s run- Hand coming forward less towards camera. same with foot, also ear on down needs a delay.
Cordok’s run- On original take off, curl hand as it leaves ground, also on the down anticipation frame bring the hips down and forwards just a little, some in-betweens, on down pose tilt head down less make sure they are always looking ahead not down. Also on stop have a little bit of fall forward as they stop, (the ending of momentum.)
So I fixed them While I was lined them. and I was done.
I wish I would have had time to colour them, but considering I already got an extension, I was just happy that I got all of the animations lined and to a point where I was happy with them. I am aware, that there are some technical problems with the animations, like feet changing size sometimes, dress changing length a little, shorts getting longer, and armor shifting a little, but these where things I noticed after I had already finished exporting and was writing this conclusion/ reflection, I would try to fix these if I had time, But I am happy with my work, and I had a lot of fun working on this despite all the stress.