I really enjoyed doing the run and jump in 2D, which I found much easier than the walk cycle. It was very enjoyable to animate. I used a reference video going through it frame by frame to get my key poses; although I’m not sure I used the best video for reference, I think it gave me a good result.
My original key poses for the animation weren’t great so I sent them off through Sketch for feedback, and I got some notes back:
- Add more in-betweens to exaggerate the anticipation
- think about the line of action and the spine
- rework my timing, referencing Aodhans video
- Exaggerate my pose on the landing
My timing on this was also far too fast.
So I took the feedback and reworked my key poses and came back with this
My key poses on this one were better, but it still suffered from being too fast. I would love to say that I scrapped this version and started over, but I forgot to save the file and had to do all my feedback over again, but I’m thankful this happened as I did it better the second time around.
This is my final version after reanimating all the improvements
I am really happy with this final animation; I think it’s the best out of all the ones I’ve done this semester. I do think there are things I could improve on; I could definitely push the poses further, like maybe making the arms have a little swing before it comes up. I also think coming down I could have had the body squash more down. I think I should have added more character to the jump, like having the character fail coming down on the jump and falling before picking itself up and running off of screen.
I did experience a few difficulties while animating this; I really struggled with getting the timing right, especially during the arc of the jump, but referring back to Aodhan’s video helped, and he also showed me how to use pegs, which really helped my jump feel more complete, especially when I had the body in that ‘C’ shape.