In week one of our second year, we began with a lecture that briefly explained our objectives and assignments, specifically what would happen and what was required to be completed. Getting ready to begin work involves downloading files and software. During the morning session, our lecturer Alec demonstrated several controls in the Rain rig by adjusting the body and adding weights to the legs while carrying out the walk cycle. In the afternoon session, Aodhan introduced us to new software called Toon Boom, which I tried out. It did not differ too much compared to Krita, but there were some little differences that I just needed to get used to using. We will continue to work on both 2D and 3D together during the first semester. We had to finish a walk cycle, a run cycle, a run and jump, and a walking-in-personality cycle for the first assignment.
In week two, the lecturer continued to demonstrate and lead us through the walk cycle, and I began attempting the 3D walk cycle by following Rachel’s tutorials and the 2D walk cycle by following Aodhan’s Krita tutorials. Following the 2D and 3D videos, I compared my knowledge of how I comprehend doing each walk cycle, and I discovered that doing the 2D is much more straightforward for me than doing the 3D, but I believe this could be since I am still developing my skills of using 3D software. I was also more interested in 3D, even though I found doing 3D more difficult than 2D; therefore, I decided to challenge myself to start with a 3D walk cycle for my assignment.
The references images:
Here’s my attempt at the 2D walk cycle:
The draft version, which still needs a lot of tidying up on the lines, further drag and pull movements for the hands, arms, and feet must be done.
We were given instructions to create a secondary part and rotate it to the character’s head. I also completed this section by following Aodhan’s tutorials. After tidying up the lines and adding the secondary element and rotation, Aodhan suggested that I experiment with changing the speeds in between frames.
The 3D walk cycle process with the keyframes spaced out in fives:
Since I followed the tutorial step by step, I still got stuck on the pull and drag of the hair and had to reset its keyframe a couple of times, and Rachel helped me in smoothing out the hair movement.
After I finished the walk cycle, Rachel gave me some input on how I might extend the front foot in the contact pose of frames 15 and 30 a little more to straighten the legs slightly more, as well as play around with bringing the hips up a little more.
Final