For this project, I used my own character that I had created in Dragon Age: Inquisition, as I had sketched out sheets for her and enjoy drawing her.
To begin with, I began looking at different videos of exaggerated body movements like Miguel in “It’s Tough to be a God” from the Road to El Dorado. I sketched up storyboards for it, and also Dr Faciller’s dance in “The Princess and the Frog,” but when it came to animating it, I found it quite demanding. I scrapped the idea and decided to do something a bit more simple.
I looked at “Weekender Girl” for a dance reference, but I couldn’t make it look right either. I then looked at “World’s End Dancehall,” but came up with the same issue. Getting a bit frustrated, I decided to scrap that idea as well and stuck to something very simple.
References:
Weekender Girl (1:17 – 1:22) ==> [1080P Full] Weekender Girl ウィークエンダーガール – Hatsune Miku 初音ミク DIVA English lyrics Romaji subtitles – YouTube
World’s End Dancehall (1:16 – 1:18) ==> Project DIVA f – World’s End Dancehall (English/Romaji subs) – YouTube
It’s Tough to be a God ==> The Road to El Dorado (2000) – It’s Tough to Be A God Scene (5/10) | Movieclips – YouTube
Friends on the Other Side ==> Friends on the Other Side – Princess and the Frog – YouTube
(attempt at World’s End Dancehall)
With that concluded, I looked to the walking cycle. This didn’t take as long in the brain storming department, but I found the timing a bit difficult to get just right. Sometimes she would walk too fast, or too slow, but I did manage to get it just right. I didn’t look at many references for this, I just looked at Belle’s walk at the start of Beauty and The Beast during her song, and also just walked around my room for a bit.
Reference:
Beauty and the Beast “Belle” | Sing-A-Long | Disney – YouTube
Begrudgingly, I began sketching out the run cycle. I was not looking forward to this one, as trying to understand how the body moves when running was quite difficult to work out for me, personally. I looked at music videos that used relatively limited animation, like “Never Lost Word” I still struggled. I understood that the shoulders change angles, but in my final animation it looks out of sync with the legs. I think changing the angle with each frame wasn’t wise, and is probably why it didn’t look right. I am of the opinion it looks fine if you don’t look at her shoulders.
References:
Never Lost Word (English Cover)【JubyPhonic】失想ワアド – YouTube
Sakura-Coloured Time Capsule ♥ English Cover【rachie】桜色タイムカプセル – YouTube
I elected to keep my usual art style, except for the running animation I didn’t do line art as I thought using more sketchy lines would give it more movement. I normally don’t do backgrounds, but when I do, I usually just use a child-like style so it looks like it was taken from a children’s book. However, looking back I could have added shadows for when the character moves on the grass, or make it looked like it was stepped on. The references I used probably didn’t help me, as I could have benefitted more from real life references, and perhaps the full body animation was too simple in the end. Although, I’m still quite proud of what I produced, despite it being relatively simple.