Overall I don’t think I struggled too much with this submission! Due to home issues in the first few weeks I missed a lot of classes but tried my best to follow along at home. I am very rusty on body mechanics and I look forward to progressing with this as I enjoyed doing it in both 2D and 3D! With not having a screened graphics tablet I struggled far too much to try and draw cleanly in Toon boom and I am upset that I couldn’t have completed my work for my submission in it. I have been testing the water with the software (quite messily) but I understand the basic functions and how to use it so I’m not too annoyed and hope to upgrade my home graphics set up so in future I will be able to use Toon Boom without any issues.
Using Blender to animate is always filled with issues but this time around I surprisingly didn’t come across too many! I didn’t enjoy working with the Rain rig as I felt very restricted in the movements I could make her do, which is why I chose to source a Woody rig and have a go at animating a more cartoon-like movement. I really enjoyed playing around with his model and will most certainly be keeping this for future projects whether that be personal or for university!
When completing the run and jump cycle I used my run cycle I had animated in 2D (but not submitted) for the lead up and that allowed me to focus on the take off and landing of the jump. I looked at just getting the character to jump on a flat surface and then later decided to exaggerate that by adding a gap and height drop in the landing.
First render test:
(landing not complete – wanting to look at the character landing into a tumble)
Feedback from Aodhan:
Focus on exaggerating the anticipation of the jump
Exaggerate the landing
I used Procreate to animate as I didn’t have a screened graphics tablet at home and was really struggling to draw cleanly on Toon boom. I have been using Toon boom for rougher animations to try and get used to using a new software and I haven’t really found that I’ve struggled with it. It reminded me of Aftereffects and after having used AF in college it was easier to pick up Toon Boom. I would have had no issues animating in Toon Boom had I of had a screen tablet at home to allow me to make cleaner lines.
I wanted to have the character tumble when landing so I looked at a lot of parkour videos to look at how to animate this. I did struggle a little with it and if I had more time I would definitely add a lot more focus and detail to this but overall I’m fairly happy with how it turned out.
I also looked at the anticipation of the jump after Aodhan’s advice and decided to hold the frame longer and add an in-between to help with the smoothness.
References:
This was a good reference to see a big gapped jump between objects.
I was undecided whether to do my run cycle in 2D or 3D. I completed a run cycle in both, and decided to submit my 3D run cycle for my submission. Whilst having also done the run cycle in 2D I found this beneficial for applying the process when animating the 3D model. I did get feedback on my 2D run cycle from Aodhan before I decided to go with the 3D animation. I got great advice from him about mirroring the sides can make the animation have a blurred motion and to try to have slight differences when doing this. As to not waste time I didn’t get to apply this to the 2D animation but for future it is valuable knowledge that I can apply to my projects!
Feedback from Aodhan:
Look at shadowing of arm and leg position (Duplicated poses make it harder to read)
Everything else was good
3D run Cycle:
I decided to not use the rain model and sourced a Woody from Toy Story model that was fully rigged and animated this. I wanted to use this model instead as I always focus on very anatomically correct and realistic movements when animating and wanted to push myself to try something a bit more exaggerated and cartoon-like. I really enjoyed using this model and it was fun to be presented with a model and rig created by someone else and figure out the controls and how to move it properly. I did have a few issues with the rig initially but after having a chat with Rachel in class, she showed me how to simplify it down and use it properly and it made the animation process a lot easier and quicker!
Test Render:
Feedback from Rachel:
Re-do the run and look at the effect of gravity more on the leg movements
Now that the IK is off and I have access to the controllers for the individual parts of the arms it should be easier to move them without them distorting
Quaternion was turned on – Rachel advised that I check this in future and change it to XYZ Euler.
IK controllers were hidden so Rachel helped me look for them and get them turned on – this made re-doing the animation was SO much easier! I had struggled with the arms and movement quite badly in my first test run of animating Woody.
I rendered out the 32 frame animation at 24fps and added it into to loop and lengthen it.
I had to render this out quite a few times as there was always a slight glanky movement that I wanted to correct. Even with the final render there’s a part when his hand moves down and it flaps a bit. I looked over the blender file so many times and it looked fine in Blender but when rendered out it was noticeable.
A bad test render:
Final render:
References:
Woody Blender Model sourced from – https://app.gumroad.com/d/354283c2d8ca409a9a2cc7b5e8fd14fd
Run reference:
ToyStory 3 game for PS3 – looked at gameplay on YouTube to see reference of movements:
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I used videos like this for referencing a more exaggerated run and looked into the positioning of the arms.
I found this video very helpful with looking at a fast paced leg movement and was able to use this as a great reference towards animating the legs on Woody.
For reference for this I looked a lot at the reference videos posted on Blackboard and also watched gameplay/film clips of Toy Story to see how Woody moves. I wanted to focus on a swaying walk like a cowboy so also watched videos of cowboys walking to refer back to.
Animated the Contact, down, pass and up poses every 4 frames to keep the tempo lower.
Focused on the body swaying and side to side motion
I used a software called Movavi Video Editor to stitch the render together. (Couldn’t get Adobe suite to work at home). This software was easy to use and because the render was cycled, it was easy to duplicate the video and create a longer walk cycle sequence.
This was my final video. I noticed that I had lost the texture of the hat (this flagged when saving in blender as it is likely an older blender version model) but I don’t think this is too noticeable thankfully!
Sources:
I looked at references to his movements from movie clips. I wanted to see how his body swayed and his arms would react to that.
I used this Youtube video as main reference to my walk.
I also used this reference to see how walking with a hand on the hip would work and looked at the placement of the stationary hand and how it moved with the body.
When in college we had to do a walk cycle animation as one of our first projects so I had prior experience in completing this. I have become slightly rusty and lacked the fundamentals of a basic walk cycle and after having a chat with Aodhan decided to re-draw it.
Feedback from Aodhan:
It lacks the bounce fluidity when contact is made with the ground
Advised it is probably easier to re-do the walk cycle to add this in (Definitely agree to this)
I decided to redraw my walk cycle as I lacked the up and down motion in my initial animation. I have a copy of Richard Williams: “The Animator’s Survival Kit” and it was refreshing to go back to this book and read through it for some valuable forgotten knowledge and tips! I didn’t want to focus too much on creating a character animation and drew it in a mannikin format to make sure I followed through with form and pose. I also used YouTube videos for references. A channel on YouTube called “Moderndayjames” also has a video up that I found so useful and full of helpful tips!
I read through this and made sure I had it open beside me when drawing out my animation.
Rough sketched animation – more cartoony to look at leg form and the up/down motion.
I animated on 8 frames and and then rendered it out at 12fps on 2s!
After going back and re-doing this animation I focused a lot on references to make sure I got the up/down motion.
I also had a quick sketch through of adding a bag to a character just to focus on the movement of a prop.
References:
Richard Williams: “The Animator’s Survival Kit”
I looked at a lot of hiking videos to reference the movement of a backpack while walking.
