Exercises

In the first weeks of the 3D animation section of the semester, we had various exercises to help familiarise ourselves again with animation techniques and principles, Maya and using rigs. The first was ‘ease in/ease out’;

This is a very useful element to study for animation, it gives an organic variety to movements and, of course, allows the object to move in a smooth arc rather than a line, as seen in the graph editor. We also learned about spline and stepped curves, how they can be used, and how to easily change the interpolation. The exercise was to apply ease in/ease out to a moving ball, and change the tangents to spline.

Next, we looked into arcs, anticipation and follow through animations. With this hand, we were to add additional frames to give more anticipation before the fall, and a follow through movement at the end. Then, we changed the tangent to spline, to create the arc. Again, this is a central aspect of animation that’s important to learn! Of course these are all easier to do in 3D, but the same kind of fundamentals apply to 2D, too.

If I could go back and change this small animation exercise, I would maybe have the wrist bend backwards in the far down position, and maybe give it a longer anticipation with more ease in/out.

References and Inspiration

I began by looking at various walk cycle reference sheets and watching tutorial videos to understand how a walk should be done, I took some of these into Maya as an image plane so I could have something to reference when I was making my own.

The first image helped a lot, I got confused quite often with having to flip the positions when switching over to the other leg. I also spent time looking at reference videos, specifically for animation;

This one is quite generic but it was very useful, one thing I noted is how his spine is much more hunched than I thought it would be, this makes more sense of course due to the centre of gravity, motion and weight. It was good to study, and the graph makes it a good starting point but I wanted to try have some emotion in my walk cycle, plus I was using Jill and so there would be some changes to make.

The same creator of that reference had a female version, there are a lot of differences with how her posture is and how her body moves, its much more fluid looking, especially the swing in her hips. One thing I noticed from this one as well, the feet are not straight but rotated outwards, which also makes more sense because of balance.

This reference is wonderful, I was trying to find real references of female personality walks, there isn’t many but this one was one of the best. I liked the first one, like a zombie trudging along (which was one of my ideas) and the bouncy walk.

This last reference has so much range and is probably the most useful for animation. I was particularly fond of the ‘teenage hooligan’ (1.47), ‘waiter’ (2.10), ‘speed walk’ (3.51), ‘carrying weight’ (6.10), ‘double bounce’ (6.06), ‘all is lost’ (4.55) and ‘creeper’ (1.39) references. There are other interesting ones, like Pirate, Frankenstein’s Monster, Chimpanzee and Marionette which would be a lot of fun to animate but would probably require more time.

3D Walk Cycle

From the reference video I had of ‘100 different ways to walk’ I narrowed it down to 3, ‘all is lost’, ‘speed walk’ and ‘carrying weight’ but the most emotive of these is ‘all is lost’, so my idea for this 3D walk cycle animation would be a slow, sad, slouchy walk where Jill is hunched over and dragging her feet, using this reference video as a guide. As I wanted to do a sadder walk, I looked at ‘all is lost’ with other walks in the video ‘lost in thought’, ‘bad posture’ and ‘hippy’, the first had a good timing while ‘bad posture’ had the hunched back I was wanting to make, and ‘hippy’ drags the feet more which I thought I could try to add to this animation.

Process

Blocking out the keyframes took a while, I used the 3D reference image first and keyed all the points to the frames to match it, I thought this would help me understand how the legs should move first of all as I was having issues envisioning it. I had to get up several times and walk about in front of my mirror to actually understand how the legs should move, how the body should go up and down, and how the arms swing in opposites to the leg (this was hard to get right at first! I convinced myself the arms would move in front with the same side leg)

Issues

I had a big issue with jittering and the movements not being smooth, I knew I had to take a look at the graph editor but I was still confused as to how to make the points work correctly. I sent the WIP to Alec during one of our classes and he went over the problems and solutions, I forgot to set the tangents to spline and all that there was to do was tweak the curves of the points or delete some points all together, it helps to keep the graph editor nice and organised. Here, you can see how her right foot falls much too harshly and breaks the loop, and how her left leg (see the knee) jitters a few times. This is only the blocking stage but with walk cycles, according to the video tutorials I watched on how to make them, the keyframes are really the only frames, or at least the most important frames, get these right and everything is just an addition.

Alec fixed a lot of the issues for me, and I got more confident in using the graph editor. I was able to fix the timing as well, to be slower and then I got to work on the rest of the body. I began only keying the legs, I thought this might be a smarted approach so as I could see the legs complete and key all the other frames to the right frames. It took a while, but eventually I was able to get a nicely flowing loop in the legs, with the additional points I noted down from watching my primary walk reference videos. I had her drag her foot a bit more, slow the walk, hunch her back and shoulders and had her left hand come up to her face.

There wasn’t much process, as once I had keyed the frames to the reference image I simply tweaked the points to match my idea using the reference video walks.

Getting some of the frames to move correctly was difficult at the time too, when I was keying the legs I made a control selection button on the shelf and used this to key everything, which meant I would have to delete some points later on if I wanted the arms to slowly swing in an arc in the graph editor, not in time with the legs. I liked having a bit of difference in some joint’s movements, for example having one elbow swing back faster or higher than the other, or having the shoulders move up and down at different speeds etc.

Final 3D Walk Cycle

Sad Jill Walk: Side from Megan McColm on Vimeo.

Sad Jill Walk: 3rds from Megan McColm on Vimeo.

Sad Jill Walk: Front from Megan McColm on Vimeo.

If I could go back and change things, I definitely would! The rotation of her swinging arm has a strange rotation inwards that I don’t like much anymore, at first I wanted a bit more variety of movement in the wrist but this looks a bit awkward. The hand also swings back and abruptly stops, I think this is an issue in my elbow joint graph, I could have edited the wrist rotation to have it swing out a bit more.

There is also still a hard step at the end which I wish I fixed, I could have added more of an ease in/out. Also, I wish I exaggerated the dragging foot and slowed the walk even more, as it would have added to the personality.

2D Walk Cycle

As much as I enjoy 3D, I also wanted to practise some 2D animation as well. Unfortunately, I didn’t get this complete but I really enjoyed the process, even if it was somehow more annoying than 3D! I wanted a perkier walk, opposite to the 3D walk, and I took inspiration again from the ‘100 different ways to walk’ video and in particular ‘strut’, ‘confident’ and ‘runway model’. Strut was probably the most referenced, I really liked the jolts in his steps.

Concept Art

I remembered the classes from last year about character design, so I tried to apply it to this 2D character. I knew I had to keep things simple and consistent (I imagined that if I was animating her head, I could just have the lines be a vector and just move and rotate the linework as needed instead of redrawing her face every time). She has 2 versions, curvy and sharp, and I tried to keep this theme consistent through the whole design.

I honestly liked the rounded design more for the cuteness but I decided on the sharper version, I felt that for a jerky strut a sharper design would work better! Maybe if I was doing a slinky or graceful walk, the rounder design would work better. I was also debating on whether or not to keep her shorts, it would be easier if she just had her coat.

I started testing some colours, I liked this palette but it was a bit too simple and didn’t go as well as I thought it would.

Simplified

As this is a 2D animation, I knew how important easy shapes to replicate are for a cycle. Here, I just broke down her new design. From looking at the walk cycle image references, I believed I could get away with a more detailed face, hair and shoes as I could just have these lines be vectors, and therefore easy to just rotate and move to different positions in the frames without loosing quality. I would only need to draw one face, 3 different hairs (2 with a bounce/flick) and 3 shoes (flat, heel up, heel down, even heel down may not be needed, just a flick in the sneaker tongue).

Colour Testing

I made a couple of colour palettes and chose the ones I thought would work best for a character. I liked design A, but the skin and coat colours weren’t very nice together (the coat orange could have been the hair, instead). It also reminded me a lot of Coraline, which wasn’t intentional with her design! B and C however I loved, I liked how C’s colours all went nicely together but on the other hand, B’s colours contrasted with her skin and the peach hair looked so pretty! I wasn’t sure if I was going to have multiple colours on the coat, that could be hard to keep track of, but I tested 3 different designs anyway with these 3.

As I couldn’t decide on B or C, I merged the 2 colour palettes and tried to make another set. Again, I was torn between B and C! The purple skin of A is very cool though, but the purple coat on C was even nicer than the pink. B however had a much more interesting palette, I still liked the original B though.

Animated Sketch

I could work out colour palettes later, but I had to get started on the walk cycle sketch. I started with the legs, referenced the frames from the images, and added a bit more of a strut to it. Its jumpy, but I kind of like the style! The coat was much harder, I had several passes over it making it bigger, smaller, getting rid of the flick, exaggerating the flick, and ended up here. I don’t like how it is at the moment, it needs more work I feel, and definitely more of an ease in and out at the highest/lowest points and sped up in between. It also doesn’t really match with what the legs are doing, and I believe there is too much movement in it and would look better if it was more like triangle swinging back and forth. Another thing, I forgot to lower and raise the body appropriately, I think it looks fine at the moment but it would probably be needed in a final cycle.

One thing I am happy with is the coat collar! I had the collar in the design to finish the shape of the coat, and in this sketch I had it flick and bounce back and forth in a way I’m very happy with, I’m pleased I got it looking like elastic! It’s a nice sharp motion I think would have looked good if this was finished.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to finish the sketch or the final animation. 2D is harder for me than 3D, but I still enjoyed this process! It was much more relaxing, as I just used Procreate for everything (the animation feature is very rudimentary, which I like for simple planning) and I was going to take the sketch into Clip Studio Paint as I haven’t used it before.