Seventh walk cycle attempt

Another walk cycle attempt, using a totally fresh character. I still can't get the hang of making the arms seem more flexible so I decided to try and incorporate their stiffness into a sort of march.

I was really excited all the time I was working on this and had real fun with it — it was nice to use what felt like a much looser character. Unfortunately it didn't come out quite as well as I'd hoped.



I don't think there's really enough bounce in the walk. The character's quite cartoony and looks as if he should have a lot of up-and-down movement to match the exaggerated swing of his arms. This one has a lot less frames, too — only 16 in total, counting inbetweens. This meant that it was easier to work on and plan out but the fluidity suffers for it.

Overall I don't think it's too bad, but it could really use some cleaning up and alterations to the up and down positions to make them more prominent.

Sixth walk cycle attempt

Slightly better than previous attempts — at least the arms move properly this time, but they still feel very stiff and very slow. I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing wrong here; I think it may be that, rather than just drawing the inbetweens with the frames pegged as normal, I try to line up the heads so they're at the same height. I thought that lining up the shoulders that way meant it would be easier to figure out the position of the arms, but it usually ends up comes out looking a bit squiffy. I guess it's because it doesn't take into account the shifting of the body and difference in height in each frame?

I think I'll try a totally different cycle next time as I can only learn so much by constantly tweaking the same one over and over.

Fifth walk cycle attempt

I went back again and rejiggled my last attempt, having a crack at fixing the arms. This time I made sure that the arms were further away from the body at the highest point of their swing to allow more space for inbetweens.



I quite like the up and down movement, but the arms are too stiff. The upper arm movement looks okay but the lower arms need to follow their own arc and 'flick' a bit as they swing back and forth — at the moment they follow the movement of the upper arm and so appear a bit stiff.

There's another kink in his arms that Ron suggested might be due to the first and last frames (where the cycle begins again) not quite lining up properly, so I'll go back and have a look at those to see if there's anything I can do to fix it. He also suggested a couple of oddities in the figure's front knee, the first where the foot slides back as the figure drops but the knee doesn't quite follow. There's also a point just before the passing position where the leg kicks backwards instead of coming forwards — I was getting pretty frustrated because I couldn't really see where I was going wrong so I'm really glad he was able to point these things out to me. Being able to actually do something about it is immensely satisfying!

Fourth walk cycle attempt (now with arms)

Bit gutted with how this one turned out — the arms almost-kind-of-work, but there's a weird kink in the front arm as he steps forward. I don't think I had his arms swinging far enough away from his body, leaving me with the same problem of not having enough space to fit the inbetweens in correctly so they're a bit jumpy.

I have to admit that I'm quite pleased with the legs though. I still need a lot more practice but I feel like I've learned quite a lot already!

Fourth walk cycle attempt

Yet another new version, correcting most of the proportion problems from the previous attempts. I paid a lot more attention to keeping the size of the legs consistent, and while it's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, I think it's a vast improvement!

Next up, a whole new set of problems — the arms...

Third walk cycle attempt

I was much more careful with numbering the frames this time around, making sure I only circled the keyframes so that it was easier to backtrack if I made a mistake.



I fixed a lot of mistakes in the original keyframes which made the inbetweening process much easier. I realised that he didn't drop low enough on the 'down' position which was why I struggled with the inbetweens so much — there simply wasn't enough space between each keyframe to allow for any inbetweens!

There are still masses of problems with this. I should have paid more attention to proportions. The legs and feet, in particular, keep changing size. There are so many moving parts that it's difficult to keep track of how things are moving. Still no arms at this stage, once again I wanted to try and ensure the legs moved correctly before anything else.

Second walk cycle attempt (scrapped)

Made some really stupid mistakes on this one! I wasn't careful enough with numbering my frames. I circled each frame number and completely lost track of which ones were keyframes. Sounds like a minor thing but it meant that when I made a mistake on an inbetween, I couldn't remember which were keyframes and which were the ones I'd messed up.

This doesn't look good at all. It's very jerky and he slides back and forth where I didn't take enough care in checking the position of the feet. I also noticed that there wasn't enough height difference between poses to accommodate enough inbetweens, which I think may also be why I struggled so much. Next time I'll be more careful to check he's dropping low and rising high enough to give me enough space for extra frames.

Somehow, probably as a result of my sloppy numbering, I also managed to get the inbetweens in the wrong places — ending up with too many on one side and not enough on the other. Subsequently it got to the point where it would have been more hassle than it was worth to fix all the mistakes, so I decided to just scrap it and try again... Next time, I'll be more vigilant in my frame numbering antics!

First walk cycle attempt (keyframes)

First attempt at a walk cycle! There are no inbetweens or arms at this stage. I wanted to make sure that the legs didn't look squiffy — would have been terrible if I'd spent ages on it only to discover that his legs moved backwards or something.

Really not happy with the posing of the figure to be honest, daft as it may sound! The proportions are a bit iffy as well. I was a little too worried about deviating from the handout we were given — the figure was copied almost directly from the handout and I seem to be struggling with pinning down the inbetweens as a result. I think that copying somebody else's lines kind of makes it difficult to picture how the other movements should look.

Still, all things considered, it seems smooth enough.

And now for something completely different

Secretly quite pleased with this one, as all the time I was working on it I was thinking "this isn't going to work, this isn't going to work... that cup looks terrible... this isn't going to work!"

It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination — the ball bouncing itself doesn't really look natural at all (more like it's jumping) and I should have added an extra couple of frames where the ball actually lands in the cup (at the moment, it kind of just vanishes and looks a bit odd). It might also have been cool to have the cup rattle or shake a tiny bit as the ball lands inside it.

I'd also like to do another version where the ball maybe misses the cup and knocks it over or something... if I find the time I might go back and do that.

Overall though, it's really really simple but I think it works pretty well. :]

Just for fun, here's the rough layout for it:

Lamp impact version 2, take 2

I don't think you can really see the difference too well, but here I've added another couple of frames to the ball as it bounces off the back of the lamp. It makes a very slight difference, but I think the fall of the lamp itself is still too choppy. I'd either need to add a few more frames (running the risk of making it too slow) or experiment with stretching the head of the lamp as it falls forward.

I think I may lay this idea to rest at this point. It's punished me enough as it is... and I'm sick of lamps

Lamp impact version 2

I decided to have one last stab at the lamp idea, this time approaching it (quite literally) from another angle.

My idea this time was to have the ball come from the side and strike the lamp from the back, bouncing off and knocking it forward. I thought this might be slightly easier to accomplish and also give me an opportunity to practice a rebound from the ball hitting a vertical object.

I think it sort of works, though I think it's lacking in impact and it's a bit too quick to be fully comprehendable. Once again I need to look at adding more frames and finding a way to just extend the scene a little bit longer so that it has time to register and sink in.

Finalised-ish ball bash

Further tests to see how shooting singles as opposed to doubles would effect the animation.

It's still not really what I was going for but I wanted to test it a bit more before deciding whether to scrap it completely. I think part of the problem — aside from being pretty poorly animated in general — is the lack of visual clarity. If I were to get the ball bouncing on the lamp's head in there, it might help to provide some context that could bring it together a bit more.

I decided to just use a coin to represent the ball as this would allow me to roughly plot out the ball's movement and speed without sacrificing too much time drawing each frame.

As always, a second version shot in singles:

In this instance, I think the faster version works a little better. Adding the ball seems to help tremendously but there are still a lot of problems with it. It's still very choppy — I certainly need some more frames on the lamp and would definitely need to spend more time on the ball. I'd need to keep an eye on the path of the ball and keep it falling and rising back up in a straight line, as well as watching the point of impact as it hits the lamp. Another stupid mistake — the coin changes sides where I wasn't paying enough attention to which face was up.

I think if I were to spend a little more time on it I would liked to have had the coin spin as it drops and flicks off the head of the lamp before it jumps back up. I'm not entirely sure where to go at this point — I may continue to work the idea from another angle or start working on something else. I'm thinking it might be best to just leave this one as it is.

I had a shot at simplifying the lamp's design by replacing all the springs and metal joints with a standard flexible neck. I thought this might make it a bit easier to animate him being knocked down by the ball as it has a much more straightforward range of motion than all of Luxo's moving joints.

I shot each frame quickly just to check that the animation was smooth and correct. I'm really not pleased with it at all, it seems too jumpy and it's not at all the effect I was going for. I'm trying to get his head to sort of snap downwards as the ball strikes him at quite a high velocity. I'm not sure how much of it just looks "wrong" because there's nothing else going on in the scene — I think it might look a bit better sped up and with the ball actually in place.

I might try playing around with the frame rate and adding a couple more inbetweens here and there to see if I can improve it at all.

Ball bouncing, take 4

Fourth attempt at a ball bounce, reverting back to a larger ball and again trying to really keep the arcs under control. I tried to emphasize the bounce by using two 'squash' frames instead of just one. I think this one's a bit too fast so I shot it again in 2s, which I think looks a bit better but unfortunately it really emphasizes all the mistakes and inconsistencies!



It's really wobbly right at the end — it was supposed to be a series of smaller bounces as it rolls away but it came out looking more like I just couldn't keep it straight. I think I'd just need to have it bounce a tiny bit higher.

I think I'm beginning to get the hang of a basic bounce so my next target is to have a go at playing with physics, mass and weight a bit more.

Ball bouncing, take 3

Spent the morning working on a few more tests, the first using a smaller ball than before. I managed to get my mitts on a lightbox for the whole thing, meaning it was much easier to keep control of the size of the ball and its movement through the arcs. I think the angle of the bounces look more natural as a result.

Weighted object — 1st attempt

First and very quick attempt at expressing the weight of an object.



I don't think I considered the timing of this one carefully enough. There's no depth or feeling of mass. I need to increase the spacing in each frame as the ball drops. As it is, it's too uniform and doesn't really carry any weight.

I can't really use squash and stretch in this instance as I don't want the ball to appear floppy and soft, so I need to figure out how to really emphasise the drop and impact with the ground.

Ball bouncing and other assorted excitement

Was awesome to get back to working again after such a long break. Left with one hell of a headache though — those lightboxes get into your skull a bit.

It's funny how complicated something like a ball bounce actually is. My ball kept shrinking (must see a doctor about that) as the path of the arcs got smaller — ended up just drawing around a coin to keep things consistent.

The angle of the first arc seems a bit unnatural to me — I think it probably should have started dropping a bit sooner. The arc on the second bounce looks a bit too high as well, and I didn't keep an eye on the ground level so the ball lands too far down at the end. Overall though, I think it's passable as a first attempt.

Might try a smaller ball next time and see if it makes things any easier in terms of keeping the size under control.