For my walk and run cycle and body mechanic I decided to make it in 2D. I used Krita for this.
For my walk cycle I was just aiming for a casual looking walk, nothing expressionistic or anything. I got my inspiration from just watching people walk in videos and in real life.
I started the animation by drawing a line for the head level and foot level, so I could ensure the feet would remain at a consistent level and then so I could appropriately tell how much the head needed to bob up and down for each frame. To animate the movements I first used a basic stick man all as one layer. This made it much easier to animate as then I could go over it after with the drawing of the actual character. I found this method beneficial in terms of time consumed and also just for my practice at animating in 2D in general, as it allowed me to focus exclusively on the movements and understand the different positions across the frames the body needed to be in for a walk and run cycle before anything (such as character design).
The inspiration I loosely followed for the run cycle was actually a photo of myself mid stride during a race from 2019 when I raced for my school.
I used it to draw the take-off phase/long stride and then worked around it to create the other frames. For these I more or less accentuated the frames of the walk cycle to look like the body was
exerting more energy. I found this process fairly straight forward, on problem was a few instances where I had to change how the arms were positioned in some frames t make the transition look smoother but apart from that it was fairly simple.
I did two body mechanics, the first one being a jump from a running start. I didn’t use a reference for this part, I just did this part from memory as the mechanics of a jump aren’t too difficult to frame out. At this point I was stull using my stickman as a base layer which I could draw over after, which made the jump take not much time to animate.
At this point I wasn’t sure if I would add an extra mechanic yet so I got to work on the character. Nothing fancy just a guy in jeans wearing shoes and a big t-shirt. I decided to give him a ponytail which would act as a small extra mechanic, just for the challenge of animating it moving during the walk and run cycle. I set the head, torso, legs and hair as four different layers. Starting with the head, I only drew it once to use for both the walk and run, so all I did was move it up and down and would tilt it slightly between frames. The legs and torso of course required to be redrawn for each frame. I found the torso easier than the legs, because the character is wearing a baggy t-shirt, I didn’t have to draw any definition of the body’s anatomy aside from the forearms. However for the legs I wanted them to be more detailed so I drew him wearing tight jeans, this meant I had to take muscle definition into consideration and also thing of things like how a knee protrudes when it is bent. I did the hair last (not for any particular reason). The hair was fairly strait forward, it was a pony tail so I just gave it three visible strands at the bottom and had them bounce around to match the momentum of the character, for example in the run cycle I made it snap down quicker with every step than I did in the walk cycle, because the descent of the character while running is more violent when running, which means the hair gains greater momentum when flopping around, especially when my character landed his jump. For both the walk and run cycle, once I had drawn the first half of the frames I copied and pasted them onto the second half and then inverted which arm and leg was in front and which was behind.
For the next two parts of my body mechanics I took all of the inspiration from Dragon Ball Z. The first mechanic was just a small one, I had my character go Super Saiyan. To animate this I drew one frame of the character hunched over a bit and then the same frame but I drew him with large muscles and longer spikey hair. This was the first time in the cycle I redrew part of his face, as i drew him with clenched teeth and added some wrinkles to show him struggling. The next mechanic was much bigger and required much more effort. After he exploded into Super Saiyan I made him quickly charge and shoot a Kamehameha Wave. For this I watched a few clips of it happening in the show and found some gifs of sketches on google.
This mechanic was challenging as I had to draw the body twisting and squatting down low in a stretched out stance and then spring forward with his arms outstretched. I think it turned out well but there is obvious room for improvement. The main issue I think was keeping the proportions of the body consistent as he turned. This is most noticeable when he begins the movement and turns about ninety degrees with his back facing the camera. At this part his back and legs fluctuate in size between some frames, which isn’t a complete disaster when played at the intended frame rate, but if slowed down and looked at frame by frame it is much more obvious. Especially his glutes area when he is taking a wide stance before setting his foot down looks strange when I watch it back now, but I have learned this so next time I will practice drawing body anatomy in 2D so it looks more authentic, realistic and has an even smoother flow.
I made the cycles and mechanics all in the same Krita file so they play out one after the other (I have the walk and run cycle each loop about 4-5 times each), so I decided to also add colour and effects to give it life. The colouring of the body face and legs was nothing special, just going over it with fill bucket tool. The only challenge was first, the effects for the transformation, I had lightning striking which I used a light effect brush for. I drew lines in blue then made the brush size slightly thinner and drew another line within it in white, which gave it a subtle glowing effect, which when played at the intended frame rate happens very quickly and looks like pretty convincing cartoon lightning. Also for the transformation I added a white aura which exploded into a yellow one when the transformation was complete, how it happens in the show. For the second mechanic, I used the same light brush to draw the wave. I used blue again, then drew over just inside the edges with the same blue (if you draw over the light brush twice it makes the colour brighter), then I filled the inside with white. This gave it a glowing effect.
Overall the project came together how I envisioned it would and I am happy with it. It was good experience and I learned new techniques to animating in 2D which will allow me to work quicker but also more efficiently next time. I can also see the areas that i need to improve on, which I already mentioned above, which is mainly perfecting how to draw the anatomy of a body at different angles of a movement/mechanic.