reflection – Animation Strategies

This unit was stressful to say the least due to having to balance multiple cycles at once along with reassert and putting my references into practice. This came down to me putting a lot of pressure to get things done within a Critten time, and I was told by a few tutors that I was putting some unnecessary pressure on myself with some of the walk cycles. The one cycle I found the hardest was the sneak cycle and adding weight into a 3d space. This was a hard cycle to begin with how much you must work on the balance of the cycle which indirectly affects how much weight you can convey which led me to restart the process a few times now and again to get the install key poses right. Though another side to this cycle was I was trying to do a more cartoony walk overall which was not helping due to rain having more realist limits clashed a bit so once I figured that out things started to fall into place. Though I am pleased with my result especially with the down pose having a good sense of weight and force behind it and give the walk a nice pay off for the buildup. The cycle I would dislike the most would be the run even though it took me the least amount of time to get it right; it still feels a bit off, and I could not implement my reference to its full capacity. For reference I used the run cycle from the eternals behind the scenes clip that have online but, the problem with that was the actor was held up with cables to give her the Shallotte. This was the main issue because that cable made her upper torso very stiff, which when translated into my run resulted in a very stiff upper body and on reflection it would not be the best reference I could have used for this project. My favorite cycle in this project must be the run and jump and how the wings interact and overlap within the cycle. I think that this  is good because when the character is about to jump, I managed to get the wings to go up lower and shoot down over the arms when they take off simulating how actual wings work which, I think that really works for the cycle. Though I do think that the wings could also bob up and down in the running section because it looks like there just floating on their back and adding just a little bit of a up and down motion it would add some weight and make them more tannable in the process. On the other hand, for the base key poses, they carry the best demonstration of weight with each step having so much force and weight that helps the overall build up. For my research I think I could have done a few more thumbnails to try and get a better scene of what I was doing like the scarf in the basic walk which would have given me the chance to see the path it would take in the animation process. Overall, I am pleased with how each cycle came out though there are many aspects I could have improved as a whole, and it was a nice chance to do something like this and put into practice all the things we learned last year