Made using Toon Boom Harmony

Lip Sync Animation- Yun Jou

Gif Version

Long Jump Animation- Raffina

Weight lift Animation

After my Halloween break, I was pretty fatigued after doing the animated walk cycles for the previous submission, and it took a while to get started on the three animated submissions for the Christmas deadline. I selected 2 characters from different franchises this time to do my animated submissions, Raffina and Yun Jou, and made the weight lift animation with a simple designed original character to speed up animation.

I have learned a lot about animating character doing other things from Walking and running, and it was interesting to learn how the body moves, especially from my references, as it did actions suck as jumping or lifting heavy objects.

I filmed myself doing a long jump, and weight lifting, and even did a lip sync test for each of my animated submissions, and while the long jump and weight lifting were useful in helping me create my animated pieces the lip sync one was largely done without the need of the reference. Then I put all of the refs into Toon Boom Harmony and drew key frames as I animated.

 

The lip sync test was done using Yun Jou, one of the Earthen Heart disciples from LIVE A LIVE, who is a highly skilled martial artist and prodigious young boy with a kind heart, described as having a purity of spirit that shines through in every word and deed he does. I had chosen him because I was very familiar with the character and had been fixating on specifically the Imperial China Chapter of the game for a while now. I used his dialogue in his speech to Oersted for the lip sync test.

When I sent the initial completed animation to Alec he told me that the animation was only 3 seconds, too short for the actual brief.

So I extended the animation to include more of Yun Jou’s Dialogue, adding in him lifting his head before he says “When we struggle” and shaking his head as he says “When we’re lost and don’t know what to do” as well as adding more movement to his eyes and eyebrows as he is talking throughout the animation. I also added some secondary animation to the ribbon of his bandana and his hair, and took great care to make sure that his lip flaps matched up to his dialogue, even animating in 1s at certain points. My final animation was 11 seconds long, and while it didn’t use all of the audio above, I consider it to be the best of the three animations I had made, being especially proud of how I made Yun change his expressions as he talked, and how I animated his lip flaps to his dialogue. I also learned about how the body moves up with the head when the head is tilted up, so I animated the body moving with the head as it tilted up.

The character I selected for the long Jump is Raffina, from Puyo Puyo like Ecolo from my previous semester. Raffina is a very outgoing and snobbish character, very good at martial arts like Yun Jou but hardly magically proficient. I chose her due to my ongoing obsession with Puyo Puyo characters, and much like Ecolo I had drawn her in personal illustrations before.

The same was said for Yun Jou. It was quite fun animating Raffina following my reference to the long jump, as I added a lot of different anticipations to the animations, such as her first lifting her arms up before putting them out behind her back as she crouches down, and also added secondary animation and follow through such as he hair unfurling as she jumps and her clothes still moving after she had finished the jump, and her closing her eyes at the start of the jump.

When I received feedback from my teachers, they told me to make the long jump last a little bit longer, adding an extra frame of animation to it so that my character was in the air longer. I was worried about adding in the extra frames into the animation, as that would have meant making more line art for the final piece, but I added it in and it made the jump easier to focus. I simplified Raffina’s design and omitted her bag due to time constraints, as I finished Raffina’s animation very late into the semester, and didn’t want to deal with the hassle of adding her finer details, such as the stripes on her tights.

I am quite proud of my long jump animation, as a previous long jump animation I did as a test in this semester had a lot of problems, such as the arms being far too long compared to the waist. The arms should only reach no further than above the knee. the jump itself was also a bit janky, but the final animation I did for submission is proof of how well I’ve improved between that and the initial warm up. Below is a comparison between the test and the final submission.

The final animation was a weight lifting animation. I initially wanted Yun Jou to be the character doing the weight lift, but due to having very little time left by the time I had really started, I decided to make the character a simple designed generic boy wearing a hoodie. When I got my feedback on the weight lift, I was told to make the hands slightly overlap by having one of them grip the weights later than the other. As I worked on the animation, I added some follow through and secondary animation to the character’s hair and added expressions to his face to convey him straining as he struggled to keep the weights up in the air, and added his head drag behind his body as he lifted himself back up. I also added anticipation to his body leaning back before moving forward and he lowers the weights. I do wish I had worked more on the animation, but due to time constraints I had to cut corners, though I didn’t cut back on animation.

Like the Long Jump animation, I worked on a warm up animation to help me get familiar with how the body works. While the timing and object being lifted, a large weight rather than two smaller ones held in each hand, are different, much of the fundamental parts of the body moving are the same, such as the person bending down to pick up the weights, and them trying to lift it.

For all these characters I created little sketches of their proportions to aid me in the creation of the animations, using what I learned about how the arms should reach no further than the top of the thighs from a book by Ryu Sumiyoshi called “A guide to Drawing Manga Furries” which had a section on learning about the basic human body, and that failing to understand it could create characters with bizzare proportions.

I had a lot of fun doing the animations, even if I did get distracted from the work to focus on the 3D work which also held me back from doing the 2D work, but the teachers were helpful in how to make my animations more lively and less robotic. Converting the live action references was also an absolute pain, as the I made each of the key frames last for seconds at a time trying to create all of them. This made Toon Boom Harmony lag horribly and made me question my own sanity trying to shorten them down to just 2s. Nonetheless, I enjoyed making the animations and I learned a great deal about how the human body moves as it does actions like weight lifting and long jumping, and I hope to take these on board the next time I have the opportunity to animate actions like these. A lot of animators use reference to aid their animation, and help them understand how the human body bends and moves.

I also learned a great deal about how the mouth can produce different sounds when it is contorted into different shapes. For example, when it is wide open, it produces an “aaah” sound. and when it is small and round, it can make an ooooh sound. The tongue can help produce “L” sounds, and teeth can help to make a wide range of sounds, such as “Nnn”, “T” and “D” sounds. Mouth sheets are incredibly useful to help you animate someone talking, and if you know the mouth shapes, you can really bring the dialogue to life in your animation.

Overall, I’ve learned a lot about the anatomy of humans as well as how the body moves as it does certain actions such as weight lifting and long jumping, as well as animating them, as they’re both actions I haven’t really done a dedicated animation to either those actions before, though I had done an animation of Sig from Puyo puyo lifting up a ball and throwing it back in 2021. I feel between back then and now I have really improved in the timing and anticipation of my animations. I hop the next semester will allow me to animate even more different actions and help me to think about my final year project.

We learned about the personality of walk cycles and breaking them down so we can animate our own animated cycles. When it comes to looking at the walk cycles, we looked at:

Personality- What they might be feeling/thinking

Technique- Contact Poses may be more extreme or different

Speed- An angry walk will be faster, a slow walk might be someone who is drunk.

The technique of a walk can greatly affect the timings of each pose, like a strut or a march. The arc your arm moves in might be different or you might bounce while you walk.

Most walks follow a similar structure. If we film a live reference, we can pause it at intervals and break it down, find a each of the poses that go into the walk. We also have to consider what format we do the cycles in, if we use a 2d reference for 3D walk cycles, the posing in 3d will be different to what it could be in 2D. 3D is also a more natural walk, so step size should be short, and contact poses closer together.

2D cycles do not have this issue, so you could get away with extra elasticity.

I finally managed to complete all the cycles I was required to do for my submission for coursework during our study week before the deadline. I used Toon Boom Harmony for all 4 of them, which was an interesting animation software program to work with. I found using Toon Boom Harmony to be fun to use, and when it came to creating the final line art for them, I found using the Pull-along brush tool incredibly useful in creating smooth lines I can simply trace over the construction lines for. When I first used Toon Boom Harmony, I was a little alienated by the UI, as it was vastly different from Adobe Animate, an animation program I’m more familiar with. but once I really started using it, I realised that it was a lot easier to use than I thought. All of my animations were animated in 2D in 2s and feature different characters from different franchises.

Over the past few weeks I was hard at work trying to create these four cycles, doing a great deal of research on how the character moves, following Richard Williams’ walk cycle ref and Preston Blair’s Run reference and filming my own live action references as an aid for my personalised walk cycles and breaking them down to get an idea of how to animate them.

I put construction lines of the body, the legs and the arms all on separate layers. The body is animated first, then I draw the legs touching the ground (I make a shape layer to serve as the celling and floor) and then animate the arms, either following Richard Williams’ walk cycle or Preston Blair’s run cycle or a live action reference, which I used for the personalised cycles, and then created a layer for the line art that is traced over all the construction lines that is then coloured, making sure to make the left legs a shade darker as they were behind the right leg. I chose four different characters to animate 2d walk cycles for, and originally planned to do 2 of them in 3d, but while doing the personalised cycles I realised I was much more comfortable doing 2D walk cycles rather than 3D, as when it came to using rigs to animate I have to consider how to animate the bones in a way that doesn’t look wonky, whereas in 2D I simply have to add a new frame of animation to make an animation look more fluid and less choppy.

Ecolo was chosen for my personalised run cycle. As he was a being made of space matter and being a mischievous and playful creature, I had to think about how he would be in the air a lot longer than the others, as he was lighter than all the other characters I chosen. During development of his walk cycle, my teacher said that to really bring out that Ecolo was as light as he was, I should add more frames where he’s up in the air after his foot pushes him off the ground. Ecolo’s cycle has a mischievous and curious feel to it, with one hand behind his back and the other close to his face, a unique pose that I hadn’t seen videos for on the internet, so I filmed a live action reference of Ecolo’s cycle to get an idea of how the torso and arms moved as the character was running.

The reference was a great help to me making Ecolo’s walk more realistic with the torso movements, and I was surprised by the additional movements to the legs. The teachers liked how I added the overlap on his head, and how I played with the timings of the ups and downs, making him seem mischievous. When it came to the legs, they seemed to stay in place for a little bit longer, and the feet seems to change in size as the animation progressed. Since Ecolo was a light character who stayed in the air for longer, that meant adding in more poses of him being in the air. Overall I’m very happy with that I’ve done with Ecolo’s cycle.

Jax was chosen for my personalised walk cycle, having watched the pilot of the show he hailed from, The Amazing Digital Circus. as GLITCH Productions already posted his 3d walk cycle online, I was able to use that as a frame of reference, along with my own live action reference, to adapt it into a 2d space. I also added my own personal touch to the animation, in the canon pilot Jax’s ears barely moved while he was walking, so I animated his ears going down and up while he was walking, and moved his right arm on his hip following my live action reference copying his Glitch Productions walk cycle. Trying to adapt Jax’s walking style from the pilot to 2d was a bit difficult, because the 3D reference was more a less a diagonal view from the front. So I made a live action reference from the side for Jax’s walk cycle, to aid in animating the walk cycle. I found that much like in the Ecolo run cycle the torso twists from side to side, so I made sure to follow the reference and break it down into frames, such as contact, passing, up and down poses to adapt to Jax’s walk cycle.

When Andrew reviewed my walk cycle for him, he compared it to the original 3D walk cycle and pointed out how in the 3D Cycle Jax’s head has a delayed reaction, showing an opportunity for more overlap. In addition, His left arm gets a little bit stuck in space. Otherwise, Jax’s cycle is really good as is.

The live action references I made to aid my personalised cycles were a great help to me, as they helped me learn how the torso and hands move as the character runs. If I had neglected to do the references when I did or couldn’t find the time to rip them off the camera, I would probably have not been able to finish the two personalised cycles.

The vanilla cycles, both which were started when the personalised cycles were nearly completed, were much easier to do, as I only needed to follow Preston Blair’s run cycle guide and Richard Williams’ walk cycle guide to help me.

Anon from Snoot Game was the character I chose for my vanilla walk cycle. He is an asocial and withdrawn person who moved to Volcaldera after a major incident at his old school. I found animating him to be quite enjoyable, as his featureless face meant I did not need to worry about animating eyes or mouth, simply his nose and ears. Taking what I’ve learned about the torso twisting as the arms moved from side to side, also animated the clothes Anon wears moving along with his torso. As I was doing a vanilla walk cycle for him, I chose to make his feet movement remain close to the ground and animated his arms in a a nice, simple arc. During the creation, because of my copying and pasting previous frames for the line art, I realised that Anon’s hand was twisted 180 degrees, so I redrew his hand in the arc to make it consistent and less jarring.

Sig was the last choice to use in my cycles, being used for my vanilla run cycle. I had animated him before, so I was more familiar with the forms of Sig’s body, such as his hair, his arms and his legs, and with my being strapped for time on choosing and animating someone and being stuck in an art block, I chose Sig so I didn’t have to worry about animating a brand new character.

In addition, I got a lot of feedback from my teachers over my walk cycles and what I could do to improve them, but considering how close the deadline is I have the option to leave them as they are, not to mention I had been so focused on my practical work I didn’t consider writing up the written work until now. The teachers also told me I need to be careful about where the foot pivots from as it’s going up, they said I could bring the foot forward a little bit on the down pose and then bring the contact pose forward, and if I wanted I could add overlap on the foot as its coming down.

The teachers, Aiden and Andrew, were very helpful in pointing out any flaws in my walk cycles. For example, Aiden talked about how in one of my cycles, the hand moves in a natural arc and then jumps, or I could put a bit of in-between to help with the spacing between the arms. They also praised my attention to keeping the cycles realistic to how we naturally walk, with keeping the feet close to the ground.

When it came to animating the run cycles, I used Preston Blair’s reference, especially for the vanilla run cycle, do aid in animating them.

Overall I found animating my walk cycles to be a lot of fun, as I was really able to think about how to make the characters move fluidly without too much clipping. Animating these characters will certainly help me think about how to animate more complicated scenes in the future. Animating my walk cycles also helped me stopped myself from being too lazy, as it was something I genuinely wanted to do, and I had focused all my effort into doing my 4 walk cycles, rather than procrastinating. I also learned a lot about making a good walk cycle, and how to improve upon it, such as having the arms always operate in some form of swing as the character is walking or running, unless, like in Ecolo or Jax’s cycle, they are set in place such as on the side or behind the back.

When I first started doing coursework for this subject, I was unsure of where to start with my walk cycles. I was originally planning on doing them in 3D, but the rig animations always came out awkward when I followed the 2D reference. But when I tried doing them in Toon Boom Harmony with different characters, I found myself really enjoying using the software to animate them. I do hope I can get to do more 2d Animations like this later on in my second year. Below is a link to the Syncsketch file containing my finished pieces.

https://syncsketch.com/sketch/ZTlkOWRmMDM0/

We met with someone who worked on Guardians of the Galaxy 3 among many other shows and movies in his portfolio. Guardians 3 was a massively complex film, having 230,000 assets submitted in the 1 and a half work added to the film.

50 animators could be working on Rocket Racoon, who was conceptualised at every stage of his life, from a little racoon kit to a full fledged grizzled, physically modified adult, and even had walk cycles at every stage of his life. All the animators were well versed in the principles of animation, and some sequences had no references, and the animators thought how to best use the reference if they have it.

Being involved in the project from the beginning makes the process smooth and can help tell a story from the start to the final ending. Face performance was looked at and making Rocket’s ears and tail move to serve as emotional devices helped make Rocket more expressive. The animators needed to combine all the elements to make Rocket as expressive as possible.

Nathan McConnel also worked on The Golden Compass movie and the BBC His Dark Materials movie. Technology is constantly evolving, and what worked 10 years ago may no longer work now. Nathan worked on a single shot on the Golden Compass for 5 months. Nathan used Maya, the industry standard for the kind of filmmaking he worked on, though he also worked in Unreal and Blender.

I worked on my walk and run cycles with personality as well. When it comes to making walk cycles, I have to consider several things. One of them is getting references for my characters, and have them grounded in what I want to do, and get used to the timing/weight/personality etc.

There are lots of references online for run cycles and walk cycles with personality, and following them can help improve mechanics and timings, and I can even choose to store said references for future reference, which can prove to be very useful for my assignment.

When it comes to making runcycles, they can differ greatly from normal walk cycles. For example:

• They tend to be faster than walk cycles.
• The timing between poses is shorter.
• The character leans forward more than in a walk cycle
• there is an extra pose, both feet leave the ground
• less overlap from the arms and body and even the feet. It all depends on the style/ weight of character.

I then started work on my personalised cycles.

I chose to do Ecolo from Puyo Puyo for the personalised run cycle.

Ecolo is a rather playful if brash space wanderer who would easily bury the world in rainbow jellies if he wanted to. I wanted him in the run cycle to be morbidly curious, with one arm behind his back and the other close to his mouth, as if intrigued by what he is seeing. As I was working on him, my teacher gave me some advice on how to make him more floaty, as Ecolo is a very bouncy and light creature made up of space matter.

Trying to think of a character to do a personalised walk cycle was more tricky. I couldn’t think of anyone to draw walking, but recently I watched a short called The Amazing Digital Circus, and one character caught my eye- Jax.

Jax is a purple rabbit creature who is smug and self centered. He acts borderline sociopathic towards a lot of his collegues and generally has no qualms about being a circus being. The creators of the short, GLITCH Productions, uploaded a video of all the characters’ walk cycles, including that of Jax, which gave me the perfect frame of reference for my walk cycle for Jax.

Doing my own live action frame of reference for both Jax and Ecolo was instrumental in how to do their arms in the animations.

Run and walk cycles have to have everything broken down into key poses. You would probably have everything on 1s, but you can have it be on 2s if you want. Changing poses can give a slightly different style of walk or run, as does the timing and position of the arms or how the character leans. All cycles have a minimum of 7 poses, but a run cycle can have as many as you would like, though bear in mind in 2D avoid the foot coming down. Ideally the contact pose should be a little different, and make sure its not exactly mirrored or it will get flickery. And not all arms arcs need to be left to right. In fact sometimes only one or none of the arms need to be swinging in an arc. They could be planted on the hip, or on their head.

Today we worked on an exercise task set by our teacher, we had to finish off animating a walk cycle in which the character double bounces. The teacher posted a ref to help us fill in the blanks.

In addition, for our coursework submission, we have to do four different walk cycles-

A vanilla Walk cycle

A vanilla run cycle

A walk cycle with personality

And a run cycle with personality

All the cycles can be done in 2D or 3D, But if they are being done in 3D we have to use the Rain or Snow rigs we were given in an earlier week.

I actually started a vanilla walk cycle following Richard Williams’ tutorial before I started this year, which I then finished off and I do plan on submitting that as part of the final coursework. The animation is of Sig, a character from Puyo Puyo.