Wednesday 2 December 2009

Finished 2D walk cycle

Wahaaay I have finally finished my 2D walk cycle woop woop! It has taken me five go's to get it looking like my own walk, and I must admit I turned into a very angry Emily at times during this week! It was really hard to make the frames took realistic because my own walk is really fast (due to my short little leggies.)
I tried drawing out lots of in between frames to make the walk smoother, but in the end it just looked too slow and sluggish. In the end I only drew out 8 finished frames, and when I put them through the line tester the speed seemed more accurate. I then inked out the outline of my animation so that the features of the figure looked like my own and finally made it into a small movie on the line tester. I am pretty pleased with the outcome of my 2D this week for once, although I could have added a couple more frames in to make the walk smoother, I do think it looks quite a lot like my own walk. Maybe I have finally improved! (fingers crossed..)

2D walk cycle test

I thought it would probably be a good idea to do a practice test before animating the finished walk cycle, seeing as my last 2D attempt was not particularly successful! I tried to just focus on the movement of the body by using a simple stick figure, so that I wouldn't get too caught up with the detail of the body. To start with, I took a while just studying the small clip of my walk so that I could map out the key positions, then afterwards I added in a few extra poses to make the walk look smoother. The finished result admittedly isn't great because at one point the walk 'jumps' back, where I should have added an extra frame. But compared to my 2D walk last week it has improved considerably!

Tuesday 1 December 2009

My walk in 3D

I really should be more dedicated to my poor blog.. I expect it has been feeling a tad bit neglected recently.. sorry blog. Over the past couple of weeks we have been given the task to animate our own walks in both 3D and 2D.. as soon as I heard this I panicked once again!
After my rather disastrous attempt at producing a walk cycle last week, I admit that I was a little nervous at this weeks assignment.. but i guess practice makes perfect!
To make the tasks a bit easier for us to map out in our heads, we were given the opportunity to film ourselves walking. At first we had to just film ourselves walking normally, then we had to act out an example of a 'silly' walk which depicted a specific emotion. I tried to express a sluggish lazy walk, but I'm afraid it just looked like a monkey walk.. never mind.
This week I focused on getting the 3D finished because that was one I was dreading the most. It was quite demoralising because even though I spent quite a long time on it and tried a few attempts it still doesn't look right. My own walk is really fast so it was really difficult to make it look natural. Also I am considerably 'plumper' than the rig that we were given so the walk looks quite strange! But even though my Maya clip doesn't look particularly spectacular, I am actually quite proud of it.. about 3 weeks ago I was struggling to make a ball bounce on Maya, so animating a person seemed almost impossible! Here is the finished walk cycle in 3D.. please don't laugh too much..