Basic/Vanilla animation

For the initial basic animation I used the Preston Blair reference as recommended by the teachers in class and my own basic knowledge on what a walk looks like. Over the summer I had practiced many walking cycles in order to try and prepare and understand them so I used the knowledge I gained for this. I decided to do this in 3d animation as I was already planning to do the run, jump, and personality walk in 2d and I wished to spend at least part of that time doing 3d so as to not forget those skills taught last year. Unfortunately I spent most of last year moving the bones manually instead of using controllers and whilst I did make and animate a little clown during the summer as an experiment, I animated her using the bones when I really should have made proper controls for her.

I had difficulties in the first draft however with using the model as I was using the incorrect keys but I sought out the help of the teachers and was educated on why the foot kept leaving the bottom key. I was also pointed to making use of the stretchy leg control as to have the leg go straight rather than breaking.

Rachel came to me and helped to show me how the controls worked and reminded me that the auto animate exists which meant I did not have to select all and hit the keyframe button. This made animating multiple components easier. She helped me to go back to look at the Preston Blair reference and make sure that the key poses were correct as I had softened some of them when they needed to be further exaggerated. She was extremely helpful and I should have asked her for help more frequently during the process as she made it very easy to understand.

I kept making the same mistake over and over with using the wrong controls and having the feet leave their base control which caused difficulties in animating it and in keeping the legs level. The knees also kept popping and I struggled with the knee lines a lot as they would randomly seem to go in random directions so I had to go back and fix them so they made sense.

The final draft version wasn’t my best work but it did indeed look like a walk without many corrections needing to be made. I feel the torso and arm swing looked fairly good after receiving notes to not have it be so extreme. I managed to fix the previous issues i had but it still isn’t at a satisfactory level for me personally. Her hair moves really weirdly and in foresight i should have asked for help with it.

↓the final↓

 If I were to do it again I think it would have been smoother as I would have known the keys from the beginning and would not have made so many useless key frames but with the time constraints I did not have enough time to redo the whole animation, despite how I wanted to. I feel it would have benefited from another try but it is what it is. I did feel proud of myself for getting it to a reasonable state, however due to how little I have used keys in my animations I feel it is not as good as it could have been and after the hand in I shall be spending more time trying to get used to keys in animations.

Personality walk

To start getting inspiration for the personality walk I watched through the 16 walk cycles video we were given in class, I found it helpful and interesting how so many different personalities can be shown through body language, and I of course used the Preston Blair basic walk as a guide for the key poses needed for my animation

The personality walk began with a rocky start as initially I thought about refining the animation I did over the break which was to show a calm personality, but with the help of the teachers I decided to just start again using the techniques in class. I wanted to try something more ambitious than what I had done over the summer and thought of the game Hades. I chose to try animating Artemis hunting with her bow. I took my own reference in my house using a box and arrow to try and make sure I got the weight and arm movements of the bow correct as I knew if I did not it would bug me forever. The reference did not take long to take and was a crouched walk with the bow. I did my best to have a straight spine during it and to gradually pull and relax the arrow as I thought it would be a fun secondary action for the animation.

I started the actual animation process by drawing a few sketches of the Artemis designs in the walking positions, this was to try and keep the shapes and sizes as accurate as possible. I brought them into harmony and created the first basic animation of the walk focusing on the torso and legs.

 This took quite a few back and forths with the teacher to get it right as I had yet to grasp the lowering and rising with the pose I had chosen but I managed to get there in the end. One of the main issues I had however was with the program harmony itself. I usually do all my 2d work in procreating dreams and hence work on my ipad but the transition to using a black drawing tablet and my laptop was quite the change for me as i had never drawn like that before. It took a good bit of getting used to and the learning curve is something I still struggle with but I feel that the drawings overall are not too bad for my first time using this device

During these back and forths I created a waving line to experiment with the planned movement of the hair which I used as a guide for the braid later on. The arms took a little bit longer than the hair as I did the upper arms with little problem but when it came to the actual bow and lower arms there was a slightly larger issue. I went back to those original sketches of Artemis and they were incredibly helpful for getting the hands correct and the forshortening of the arms. 

I had a bit of an issue with making her drop the bow too far too suddenly. This is rectified by moving the bow further up, and making the move down slower by batting more frames to it. And afterwards I found myself rather pleased with the result as it definitely looked better.

↓the final↓

https://syncsketch.com/sketch/bxV2MIjTHyCj/

If I were to do it again I would have done more drawings of the torso or researched how to have it look less jollied but this is an issue I had in both the personality walk and the run and if given more time I would have put more time into fixing it. Likewise I would have liked to finish her clothes but time was not on my side and I spent longer than intended doing just base animations. I do however like the movements despite their sketchiness. In the future I might come back and polish the lines and refine it with colour.

 

Run and jump.

I found the in class activity of 3d animating a run and jump quite helpful in figuring out momentum and the basic movements of a jump, the richard williams reference also helped these basic inklings of ideas and were things i analysed when i found my reference, looking through it and finding the motions that correlated with the guide to help me figure out the timings needed.

Somehow the run and jump became the easiest of my animations or at least the jump part was. After the demonstration given in class on jumps and how many options we were given, I thought to myself it would be fun to do Dick Grayson (nightwing) for my animation so I began to research acrobat jumps. After looking through quite a few examples on YouTube I discovered one called the butterfly jump which suited what I wanted to achieve perfectly! I started it mostly as a joke, as I could see it was quite a complicated jump and expected to switch to a more normal jump. 

But when the first draft went so well I set my heart on it, analysing all the components to make it as accurate and fluid as possible. I did have back and forth with the teachers per my previous animations but I found that most of it was less than previous animations which kept my love for what I was doing. Unlike the run and walk the torso was redrawn on every frame due to its constant movement and I feel that it looked better than the run and walk cycles ones for that reason. I still like the first draft as it went far better than I had expected and helped me understand the animation as I added detail

I have faced a difficulty in the switch from jump to run however as it has been pointed out to me that the momentum of the left leg appears to just disappear when it should really keep going, to be honest i struggled really hard to figure out what to do. My mind struggled to visualise what to do with this momentum, how to make him move, what to do. Despite the teachers giving me guides on it I still struggled to visualise and understand them. Even when I tried taking my own reference to it I just could not understand the movement and it became a massive problem for me.

Eventually I messaged and asked for help in understanding the advice given. I was recommended to focus on my other walks rather than seek out perfection in just one of them. This bit of advice was actually really helpful as I had been really stressed over that leg switch and knew I needed to get my other animations done to be on time for the deadline.

↓the final↓

https://syncsketch.com/sketch/4emWGRzDJDux/

If I could redo it I would completely re-examine the hitting the ground as I feel that it may be my already existing drawings confusing me and a fresh look might be what is needed. After the hand in I wish to spend more time on it, and give him the nightwing hair and outfit, play with backgrounds and I would like to experiment with lighting but these ambitions unfortunately exist outside of the deadline. Overall I did really enjoy working on this animation and playing with the dynamic movements and I may experiment with doing more gymnastic movement animations purely because of how much I enjoyed this one.

Run 

In class we were shown the Preston Blair reference for doing the run cycle which I used extensively with the animation

The run was an animation that I particularly struggled with. After struggling with 3d my confidence was knocked and evidently I had no idea how people run. The first draft, despite trying my best in, looked confusing and overall a mess. 

I ended up having to just completely start over as despite back and forth with my teachers it just wasn’t getting better. So I scrapped it and started fresh, building my way back up to something like. I am not fond of this. I liked the legs but the torso and arms are so bad that they pain me to look at but I have no clue where to even start fixing them and I have little time to start over for a third time.

I had difficulties with the chest and arms as i felt they just looked really weird but i didn’t wanna go changing them too much as the previous version had a real issue with only one side moving whilst the other barely moved.

↓the final↓

https://syncsketch.com/sketch/Asn527IyCEHm/

I liked the leg animation, I felt it was the strongest part of the animation. I may re-do the animation again after submission because I am just not personally pleased with how it looks from an artistic sense