References and Inspirations

Like the issues I faced in the walk cycle, I had a hard time with the leg and foot positions after the straight leg pose! It was useful for me to have the fully layed out frames for the walk cycle, but I couldn’t find any proper full sheets for a run! This is something I really need to work on, at least Alec provided us with a sheet with the same character, I probably wouldn’t have made anything decent without it! It seems easy to envision, but applying it is where I confused myself.

This was the kind of thing I wanted to try, a very powerful run, and thankfully the animator had a video tutorial on how to do this! It was very useful, but then I decided I could just use the reference sheet and finished exercise from Alec (only I would redo the run). I still took a lot of inspiration from this, the ease in and out of the arms, legs and head looked so good, the run like a stride, I wanted to try it with my own animation.

This is a popular reference for run cycles, having the slowed down frames was very useful for me and I kept coming back to this video to make notes of how her feet land and rotate. In a lot of the animations I viewed, the rotation on the ankle is quite extreme compared to studying the real thing, her feet don’t rotate backwards like how the animated frames show! Of course this is just for fluidity and for non realistic rigs, and while the animated ones look great and fun it’s interesting to see a real comparison.

I’m so thankful for this front view! from the side you can’t really see how the rest of the body moves, like here how his arms swing up and inwards, how his shoulders and chest twist and how the feet, in reality, don’t face straight ahead but curve in and out. It’s also worth noting how jerkier the movements are and how much more subtle they are compared to the references of women running, I find this quite interesting!

I liked this reference a lot, it shows how much his legs change from just running faster; like how his knees raise up much more and extend more in the fastest run, and similarly how his arms don’t rise up nearly as much in the slower runs. This is a great reference if I was doing something more realistic! Another point I thought was interesting was how in walk cycles, the back is usually hunched somewhat because of the centre of gravity combined with the slower motion, but in a run in most of the videos the person’s back is either straight or tilted backwards, again because of the speed!

3D Run Cycle

I used the Jack rig this time, and was planning on animating a fast sprint or stride, like in the references I showed above. As I had a reference sheet like with the walk cycle, I found this one much easier and faster to compose. Alec gave us all a file with a roughly posed and untimed run as an exercise, this was super useful to start with and once I had that done, I started a new file and tried the whole thing for myself. However, I found it quite difficult to add more personality to this run, I was a bit more stuck with this run than the walk and the final motion is more like a generic run.

Stage 1 – Blocking

I started by using the first reference video and images to try to make that kind of powerful sprint their animation has, but of course I ended up messing up the frames! I hadn’t done anything with the rest of the body, I had only keyed the legs so I could visualise how the body should move even after flipping the sides. I tried to go back and fix it, but I eventually decided to start over and try make a similar run to the one Alec gave us as an exercise.

I used Alec’s reference image again for help, and went about blocking the poses. I keyed everything this time, instead of focussing on the legs, as I realised it just made me more confused about how to position the rest of the body throughout the frames. I still got a bit confused with how I should switch the limbs but I was able to look at my reference videos and I drew down roughly what every key frame should look like.

Since I had those references thankfully the keying stage went by pretty quickly, and the final result looked fine! There were a couple of issues I had to deal with, like a jitter here of there and the flow didn’t totally match but I was able to bring it around enough. The first and last frames should be the same, but I found that when I had the last frame totally visible there was a slight pause in the cycle, so I kept the last frame but just shortened the timeline so the flow was better!

Stage 2 – Polishing

Now that I had the key frames, I started trying to time it out. It was pretty simple, most of the reference images I looked a had frame numbers so I could base my cycle off of those first of all, see how it looked, and adjust the timing to look more like the live reference videos. Since this was such a simple animating finding a timing I liked didn’t take very long at all!

Of course there’s still issues, I had to fix a couple of points and I thought the best way to do this was using the graph editor. I must have accidently deleted the wrong frames though, as I ended up with a jitter in his leg! I would have to go back and fix this. Aside from that, I feel as though the timing looks quite good and the arms don’t really have any issues, maybe aside from not enough movement in the wrist or perhaps the hands look a bit too straight?

Once I was happy with the animation, I wanted to have some animation smears! I used smears in the full body animation, and adding them gave the animation much more personality and speed so I thought the addition here would definitely help. I was going to add smears to the hands and feet, particularly when the hands swing upwards and downwards, and when the feet move from the down position to the straight leg (when the leg swings forward, basically)

I used a scale smear, I learned this technique from a video I linked in my full body animation and I think the effect is super cool! I could have pushed it more I think, but I was happy with the outcome of the smears and how the hand smears worked at different times. I didn’t end up adding a smear to the feet, it didn’t look right as a scale smear.

One way I could have done it is if I added a second disembodies leg to trail behind/in front of the real leg, so it would give the illusion of speed. I like this look, but sometimes it can look strange and with the speed my animation was at, I didn’t think it would have worked properly. Still, I’m glad I tried adding the smears to the hand!

(Old) Generic Jack Run

Generic Jack Run: Side from Megan McColm on Vimeo.

Generic Jack Run: 3rds from Megan McColm on Vimeo.

Generic Jack Run: Front from Megan McColm on Vimeo.

New Final Generic Jack Run

New Generic Jack Run: Side from Megan McColm on Vimeo.

New Generic Jack Run: 3rds from Megan McColm on Vimeo.

New Generic Jack Run: Front from Megan McColm on Vimeo.

I’m pleased with how this animation came out! I’m happy with most of the movements. If I could go back and change anything, it would be spending more time on the hip and feet rotations, there are parts where his legs are not rotated in a correct way to be under him. The feet should rotate away when in the straight leg position, but curve inwards again when the foot lands so as to support his weight. I also feel like I could have had more follow through on the arms and feet, and I could have made him look like he has more weight. The old videos have a few big jitters, I tried to fix this in the new ones but unfortunately there are still problems with this, at least they’re not as noticeable now! I had a lot of fun with this process, not as much as the walk or body mechanics animations because I got a bit more confused with the placements here, but I’m happy with what I have considering it was my first time making a run with this more complex rig.