During this week, I have mostly been working on smoothing our and tweaking my animatic further. I decided that rather than redoing the whole thing to build upon the final animation, that I would spare some time and use the resources which I already had, which were the frames for my animatic. So far this is going well, but I do have to begin looking into creating my background design, as well as fixing the character’s run cycle. At the moment, I am trying to fix this by researching video references of bi-ped walk/run cycles. So far, this has been helping me determine how the leg and arm joints work, as well as the rest of the body whilst running. For further experience, I have also been watching the lesson content that my tutors have uploaded this week, and this is on animal run/walk cycles. So this is something that I have also been researching to help me understand how quadruped walk/run cycles work in comparison!
Whilst in class this week, we were grouped at random with other members in our class. The reason being was to provide constructive criticism on our progress with each other’s blogs. I felt that this went well and was beneficial to what we have been working on! It helped me come to terms that I needed to rethink the layout of my blog, and the placements of my content. For example, before this post, some of my weeks were disorganized or I had imagery or text missing. This is something I wouldn’t have picked up on my own. Not only that but by giving out advice and comparing my blog layout/content to the rest of my class members’ it encouraged me to be more descriptive and include more research and written content into my posts. This is something that I am now trying to do more frequently in order to provide context to what I’m uploading. In theory, this would provide my audience with knowledge and understanding of my work.
The critiques from my group members:
Animation progess
So far, this is where I have gotten with my animation. At the moment, it still needs a lot of tweaking and more movements drawn. For example, the run cycle becomes a bit awkward during the middle of the animation, and this is due to how the legs are completely incorrect in movement. This was an initial mistake I made during my animatic and I am currently working on fixing it! Below is a comparison to my initial animatic. It doesn’t look like much progress because my current background is still a work in progress. However, when you look at the leg movement, there is a significant improvement in my most recent version of this. There is also the addition of movement of hair, eyes and hands.
References I have looked at:
This specific video is one that I find to be really helpful in analyzing how the human body looks whilst walking or running. I feel that this is a video that I will definitely observe whilst trying to figure out how to make my character look more correct with his movements. Timestamps 1:03 and 1:23 specifically would provide fantastic references for me to use whilst figuring this out!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qV5pdO_X8U&ab_channel=AnimationReference
When looking into how canines, in particular, run and walk, this video was very informative in practice! If I animate any canines in future projects, I will have this saved in preparation. It doesn’t provide voiceover and is very simple and constructive, which makes it easier for me as a beginner to learn the basics.