Sneak progress
Continuing with my 3D walk and getting some advice from the tutor to slow the walk down to around 50 to 45 frames to really slow it down so we see the weight of properly coming down on the contact and down pose. This also allows more room to exaggerate all the movements in general like the lean back, this also allowed for more airtime for the leading foot of which I exaggerated to get that Preston Blair feel to it. During the process I did have to make a call where I had to decide if I wanted to keep the cartoony feel or keep it more realistic as there was a lot of stretch in the legs at the time. To fix this I decide to go for an even split between the cartoon and realism as I found that the movement I had was better with a little bit of stretch in the legs and sold the idea trying hard to be quiet.
After those changes, I did another pass at the arms and hair to see if could introduce drag and a bit of overlap into the model. For the hair I took from my basic walk and used the chain theory to get a good flow into the model, though I do think I need to take the sudden jot of the neck so that it doesn’t shoot the hair upwards as it was ruining the motion to a degree. For the arms I wanted a little bit of exaggeration, so I put the arms further out when they were behind the model. I did this due to the model being off balance at the time when the model lent backwards it looked a bit off balance and this way it fixed that problem.I also took a closer look at the hips and over extensions such as the legs, the idea was to raise the hight oof the two really sell the balance of the cycle plus it lows me to exaggerate the walk in a more realistic way as the rig is built with that in mind. Then I simple smoothed the x rotation of the hips allowing more of a build up before having to catch herself on the down pose. After these changes were made I put some expression into the face to commutates a little bit of stress as rain tries to keep quiet, then I sent it off for a review.
After the second round of feedback the glaring issues were how stiff the back and arms were along with the passing of the walk. To try and incorporate the feedback I looked at an article on the Wacom site which relates to doing sneak cycles in 2d, it followed the unseal format but when it came to the upper key fames for the arms and to quote Fabio Gioffre: “The upper body’s keyframes are adjusted to provide more dynamic spacing, giving the walk a looser, more natural feel.” this meant I need a little more drag in the arms and to do that as well as fix an issue with the arm clipping into the leg I adjusted the values in the graph editor and if that wasn’t the problem I removed and replaced some key frames.
To finish off the feedback I extended the cycle to around 70 frames to really slow everything down that bit more. This also allowed me the wiggle room to have more of a build-up on the up poses to really try and sell that need to be quite as before the foot was coming down to fast which, did not work for a sneak. The last touches I made were to loosen up the shoulders and torso by adding some side-to-side rotations to free up the movement and extended the arms that bit further to lean into the idea that rain is trying to keep her balance during this process.
Run
For the runs we looked at how they work in 3D and 2D with the help of Richard Williams and Preston Blair examples. For the 3D run I only had time to block out the poses, and, in the meantime, I decided to do my run in 2d as I could really break the limbs in that medium and experiment with the limbs. But what I took form the 3D blocking was how the weight was disrupted throughout the body, for this I also looked at a video by outperform where they go over the principles of a sprit which was the kind of run I wanted to do. It included a few tips on how the foot should move when its flat on the ground and how that’s where the most power is during the sprint, this showed me that I could have more of a hold on the down pose to show the model really putting everything into its strides.
For the run I wanted to recreate the run cycle from the movie Eternals (it is not a great movie but, the run cycle is good) due to it having an intreating Shallotte and purpose. The run is more like rapid leaps at the end of the sequence and during the character jumps. This means that during the run’s airtime I am going to need to hold for a few more seconds and put a lot more pressure on the down and pass pose to really sell this. The actor is extremely low to the ground which, does work for a sprit so I am going to have to lower the torso along with having the knees coming up to the chest area to sell, this pose. After these points were noted I blocked each pose and just get the timing and the right number of frames for the run.
Reflection
For this week it was hard to decide what to go forward with the 2D or the 3d run i had made in the morning class. The reason why I’m leaning towards the 3d run is that i have a more experience with making this kind of cycle in 3d like I did during the summer. Plus, I got far into the blocking stage and now it does work whereas the 2D I’m still on the blocking and even more recently I must start on my run and jump. For the 2D I’m struggling with the hips of the run which is making it very stiff and that doesn’t work and my reference simply doesn’t work with the 2D format as where 3d does allow me more control over the movements of the hips. This does seem like the best way forward in the end as I can finish it in a good time and lean further into my reference and add a good amount of weight to each down pose. Overall, i think that this is a really good way forward and will allow me more time to work on other projects.
Phoebe long ( 7 oct 2016) Final snek walk cycle (online)
