Animation practice: walk cycle V2 [clean]

Annnnd here's the clean version. Less clean/refined than the previous cycle, owing mainly to the fact that I made all corrections to the arms on the new "clean" layer, but there you go. Rather less pleased with this one than the last but it's quicker and more careless, so I'm not too upset about it. It's really just me playing around, trying to keep fresh, doing different things, etc. etc.

I seem to have a morbid fear of heads — again, he loses it in a few frames.

Animation practice: walk cycle V2

Another walk cycle, did this one pretty quickly and pretty much just made it up as I went along which explains why it's a bit squiffy. I think I've pretty much got a good grasp on leg movements now but I still seem to be having difficulty with the arms — practice makes perfect as they say! Going to try and fix the arms slightly on this one — there's a bit of a jump as he brings them forward and they extend to the furthest point too quickly so they're kind of delayed too long at the front... I know what I mean!

Animation practice: walk cycle V1 [with inbetweens]

Lazily working away on this. Got the inbetweens done; think I'm mostly happy with the legs at this point, but the arms could use some further tweaking. Need to delay them slightly so there's a bit more of a pause before he brings them forward. I think it's too fast as well; 24 frames on 1s. It just seems really really quick to my eye, though I could just be used to shooting on 2s after AP?!

I always seem to mess up on the keyframes as well, never spacing the limbs far enough apart so that there's no room for movement when it comes to inbetweens. I think it's because I don't consider the timing enough — I tend to forget I'm doing keyframes sometimes so I start animating the limbs so they're nice and smooth... then realise, oh shit, I still need to inbetween this.

Er. That all made sense in my head. COMIC TIME, BYE.

Animation practice: walk cycle V1

I'm still really lacking in confidence when it comes to walk cycles, so I thought I'd do some more playing around!

Only keyframes thus far. It's pretty simple but it seems to be mostly working. I need to adjust the arms very slightly and the hips need more of a defined arc, but it's getting there... I think!

Gotten a bit behind with the comics; planning on finishing them up this afternoon after I'm done playing around with this.

Animation Principles Completed Sequence

 

Well, here it is, the completed sequence. I've actually had this done for almost a week now but I was too embarrassed to upload it! 

I'm really not at all happy with how the cleanup stage turned out. I feel a lot of character has been lost in the process and the animation just looks a lot stiffer now than it did before. The stair climb, especially — I originally animated it on ones but shot it on twos and it's really suffered for it. I can still see so many mistakes — missing inbetweens, dodgy arcs (particularly on that angry walk) but I think there comes a point you just need to say "I'm done working on this." Have I said that on my Digital Skills blog already?

I opted not to add the bannister on the stairs. I found it difficult to draw without it completely getting in the way and it just looked sort of odd, floating there — plus I quite like the idea that the character is almost a kind of mime — though that excuse would work better if I'd not drawn the stairs ;]

Still, it's nice to see it finished after so much stress and strain. The sound isn't too sophisticated... a bit hastily slapped on but I think it adds a nice little finish. It sounds a bit squiffy when burned to a DVD for some reason so I may need to look at tweaking that a little.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm typing at the moment. Feeling pretty tired, so forgive my incoherence!

Whilst I'm here, behold my DVD/menu designs:

I'm secretly quite pleased with these. Normally I'm horrendous at this kind of thing; design and presentation aren't usually my strongest points (gulp) so it was nice to see these come together fairly well. Simple but effective I feel! Not yet gotten around to the box design but it will be in a similar vein — I'm thinking of using the scene with Gustave at the bottom of the stairs or something. We'll see what Mr Photoshop conjures up...

Animation Principles rough sequence

Pretty much the completed sequence at this stage. Certain parts I'm really not happy with — resuming the walk after kicking the ball and landing in the puddle, specifically. Two very minor things that are causing me immeasurable frustration. I think I must just be really tired — I can't seem to focus, can't seem to get them right and it's really, really getting to me.

Obviously there is no visible puddle yet... still need to add that in, which I'll probably do during the refning stage. I'm thinking I may repeat the 'happy' cycle once more just to give the puddle a bit more time to enter the screen.

It's still not quite long enough though, only 19 seconds — and he's off-screen for at least two of them. This is really worrying me as aside from repeating the happy cycle and shooting the stair-climb on doubles, I'm not sure how else I can extend the time. I don't want to stretch and pad out what's already there too much — might make it feel a bit artificial and lose credibility/presentation. aghhh

Happy walk V2 w/ inbetweens

That didn't take long! Quite pleasantly surprised with how it's looking so far I must say. I think it could use another couple of inbetweens here and there to smooth out the arms and add a bit of interest to the legs but otherwise I think it's turning out alright. I think I messed up on the arms — seems to be a point at which I get confused and they switch places but it's not too noticeable in motion. There's a weird kink in the back arm and it kind of flails a little bit but that should be easy enough to rectify.

Happy walk v2

Long time no update! Essays and Digital Skills catchup have been dominating much of my life these past few weeks but I've been happily animating away all this time and have the majority of my animation blocked out in rough, which means I can spend the Christmas period simply cleaning up my lines. All I need to do is adjust certain parts of the sequence to get it all in order and it's ready to go!

I have about 18 seconds so far, around 300 — 400 frames on a mix of ones and twos. I think that once I've made the final tweaks to my sequence and doubled up some of my frames I'll be well within the timescale. Vimeo is currently still processing it so I'll whack that up later today, but in the meantime here's the last part I've been working on:

I needed a happy walk cycle for the section after he kicks the ball, something really quite jaunty and upbeat with large, high steps and swinging arms. I took a lot of inspiration from Milt Kahl's "Pinocchio" style walks. Some people very kindly animated Milt's thumbnails on Youtube:

There was also a very nice Milt-style walk in the Animator's Survival Kit that I kept glancing back to to make sure I was getting the posing right. 

In the end, this is what I came up with: (Keyframes, doubles, 12fps until I get the inbetweens done)

It's not tremendously original but it's been a very useful exercise in observing timing, not to mention drag/overlap on the arms. If I can get the inbetweens finished today then I'll be sorted! The day is still young!

Sad character walk V4

In between coughing up the contents of my lungs, I finally plucked up the courage to re-tackle the dreaded sad cycle! I want a medal.

I'm still not totally happy with it (as always) but I think (or hope) it's better than before. Still needs a few more inbetweens to get the timing right — mostly where he picks his feet up, I just feel it needs to be a little slower.

There are some arc problems with the hips, especially on the front leg's up positions. It should be easily fixable, I think I just need to bring it back a little bit. I don't really think the arms are working either. The swing seems a little excessive for his mood — I wanted the lower arm to appear really heavy and swing very loosely from the elbow to give the feeling of weight but I don't think it really worked. I animated the arm separately and it looked fine at first, but adding it to the body really changed the way that it reads. I think I need to drop the shoulders a little lower as well, to make him seem a bit more sad.

The more I look at it the less happy I am (dammit Alex) but hey-ho, they're all things that can hopefully be fixed fairly easily...

Angry walk V2

Technically V3 or V4 but I was stupid and didn't post the previous revision...!

(sorry, it's a little hard to see — should have looped it!)

This is for the scene just after he steps into the puddle — so he'll land in it around the centre of the frame, get annoyed and then storm off-screen in a rage.

Made a number of revisions to this, mainly in the legs. I removed a lot of redundant inbetweens and changed the way the legs move. Rather than striking the ground with his heel on the contact post I felt it would have more impact if his foot came straight down onto the floor. I think it serves to give the whole thing a greater feeling of weight. I think I'd like to tweak the foot a little more and have it tilt upwards very slightly just before it comes down. I think that might give it just a touch more power.

The arms and head were driving me crackers for ages — I just couldn't seem to position them correctly and was having real trouble visualizing how they should move. Nick was really great and sat with me for ages, helping me figure out what to do with them. I have no idea if you're reading this Nick, but if you are — thank you again. You're a godsend.

Got some good feedback from Ron on it as well who helped me tweak the arms and figure out the kinks in the initial head movement. I think I've got it to the stage where I'm mostly happy with it now! All that's left is to clean up the lines. My plan is to get as much animation roughed out as I possibly can before Christmas and then spend as much time as I need over the break refining the lines if necessary. As long as the basic movement is there it should be fine.

I'm now at that awkward position where I need to figure out what to work on next — everything I still have left to do is pretty tricky so I'm afraid to tackle any of it! I should really get back to that godawful sad walk cycle at some point...

Angry walk V1

Naughty Alex, working on things completely out of sequence...

Mucking about, trying to get an "angry" walk for the last section — I think it's going alright, just having some trouble getting the arcs on the hips right as he brings his leg up and over. I find animating walks on the spot much more difficult in terms of planning arcs — I'm going to try spreading it out so he walks across the screen to see if that makes it easier. I think the trouble is that he raises his leg too high when he brings it up. I could probably make it work if I tweaked it hard enough but I think I might just try dropping it down to see if it makes it easier.

I think I need to try delaying the knee slightly as it's in the air to help give the leg more power when the heel comes down to strike the ground. Probably need to bring the leg on the contact position forward a bit too.


Rather than having the heel rise up on the up position I might try keeping the heel flat on the floor. I like how the pose looks with him really thrusting forward but I'm wondering if that's causing difficulty with getting the leg arcs right. I think he needs to drop down more on the inbetweens between the up and contact positions. His leg bends but his body doesn't drop much — I think I probably messed up the leg lengths!

I'm trying to shoot things on twos instead of ones to cut my workload in half. I'm not very good at planning things for twos — always comes out looking too slow!  

(Agh, I know what I mean to say... it's been a long day and I'm tired!)

Happy walk draft scribbley thing

Blogger's stupid video upload hates me. Arrrgghhh. It doesn't really seem worth waiting in Vimeo's 30 minute processing queue for a silly scribble like this. Ah well! Enough moaning.

Volume problems! Volume problems everywhere!

Still desperate to avoid looking at that sodding sad walk cycle for what feels like the fifty billionth time, I decided to have a crack at getting something drafted for the happy/confident/strut after Frenchy kicks the ball. This is what came out. As I was making it I was astonished that — gasp — I was really enjoying myself. I felt fairly okay about knowing the rules of walk cycles, and almost-but-not-quite feeling confident in breaking them. I was enjoying seeing my character (to quote Withnail & I) "prancing like a tit."

I dunno, I was kind of happy with how it was going at the time (despite obvious problems which I'll discuss in a moment) but I may have just been on a bit of an 'animator's high,' but looking at it now I'm not so sure. It's not really what I'd planned for the walk initially, and that's not so much what bothers me — if I keep working at it, it will definitely still work with the scene I have planned. I'm just feeling iffy about whether I should continue it or just re-do it another way.

The first step looks alright so far, aside from some arcing problems with the hip that I need to go back and adjust. His hip rises up on the front leg as he drops down — I think it should go back and stay at the same level, before rising back up and over as he brings it forward. I think. I'm not sure? The second step I just need to completely re-do — I think I need to add a little more drag to the leading leg as he swings it forward to give it a little more life.

I think the body overcomplicates matters with its changing shape and volume. I keep getting lost as to where the hip should be — I think if I make it a basic circle (as I did with the stair climbing) it will be easier to consider things like rotation/tilting of the body and help me track the position of the hip more accurately.

Stair climbing V1, take 2

 

Unfortunately not too much progress today, but I figured I'd post what I've got so far. I've tweaked the stair climbing very slightly — now he walks across the screen to reach the staircase. I'm still really unhappy with the first walk cycle so I will certainly go back and re-do it to smooth it out a little. 

Not too sure how happy I am with the slow down as he stops, but unfortunately it's difficult to animate without having a finalised walk cycle leading up to it. I'm thinking of it as a placeholder for the time being.

I've started trying to nail the arm movement as he goes up the stairs — the first part I'm actually fairly pleased with as he brings his hand up and over back onto the banister, but then it seems I lost my groove on the last step as it just kind of jiggles about uselessly. I'm going to go back and re-do it so it matches the earlier movement.

I'm feeling a little better about things. Though I don't think I've made too much visible progress I feel like I've learned a whole lot. Something as simple as his hip rotation as he drags his weight up the stairs has been astonishingly beneficial. I'm feeling a little more confident about arcs and limb movement and such. Certainly haven't mastered it yet but I think it's getting easier! (Or maybe I just lucked out...)

Sad character walk Flash test

Deciding it might be a good idea to try working in Flash for this project as opposed to Photoshop. Despite the lovely textures and lines Photoshop gives you, the lack of anything vaguely resembling an onion skin is a complete deal breaker. It's making things pretty complicated for me, so I'm currently trying to convert my sad walk cycle into Flash:

I don't think it's going so well. Flash has considerably less options when it comes to frame exposure (in Photoshop my frames were set to display at 0.06 of a second but played back at 25fps, creating smooth movement and rather nice timing) In Flash it's literally singles or doubles which has jarred up the timing on my walk cycle massively. This was shot on 2s and it looks jerky as all hell, so my only option is to whack in more inbetweens or just leave it as it is. Aggghhh. The hips are problematic, especially on the front leg when it comes forward. I know it should be coming up and forward (shouldn't it?!) but...

I'm really not happy. It's looking so awful so far, I just cannot seem to get this to work. I'm having such difficulty with the arms and I don't even know why. I've tried acting out the walk myself so many times and really paying attention, but I just can't seem to nail it. I think I'm being blinded by panic again which is stopping me from working consistently.

Sorry, I can't even type a coherent blog post at the moment. I think I need to take a step back from this bit for a while and try tackling something else. I'm feeling very conscious of the time constraints and though this is something I can comfortably tackle over the Christmas period, I'm feeling frustrated by my lack of progress.

Sad character walk V3, take 3

Had another extremely difficult day with this one. I really, really struggled to progress any further. I ended up "cheating" slightly and trying to rotate some of the limbs in order to figure out what was wrong with the arcs and I think I got something relatively satisfactory out of it (don't worry, I'll certainly go back and re-draw over it!)

I tried several times to figure something out for the arms but I'm finding it quite tricky. I don't think they should have much swing to them — kind of just hanging there, swaying with the motion of the body. I tried it myself a few times and noticed that when my arms hung loose like that they swayed forward with the leading leg, as opposed to a conventional walk cycle where they swing with the opposing leg. I'm not sure how well this will translate to animation however! It could look pretty awkward, so I think I'll mimic the same movement but have them swing with the opposing leg.

The leg movement isn't quite what I'd hoped it would be but at this stage I think I'm going to need to just move on as soon as possible. I'm feeling very concerned about this whole thing...

Sad character walk V3, take 2

My head feels like it's stuffed with cotton wool and my bed is calling my name, so forgive me if this is a little garbled!

 

Started adding inbetweens and whatnot — I don't know if it's just because I'm so tired but it's really starting to give me a headache. I just can't get it to look right.

There are still problems with the crossover — I keep messing things up when I re-draw the frames for the opposite leg — I think because the rear leg is slightly smaller so I need to be careful and make necessary adjustments to make it fit with the angles of the front leg.

I think I need to perhaps tilt the foot upwards a little more (and perhaps delay it for a bit) before he brings it back down to help give it more power. It's a little too soft at the moment. He's quite a heavy character so the down step needs to carry more weight.

Also, when he comes down, the volume of the trailing leg/foot radically changes, creating a bit of a 'snap'. Need to look at adjusting that and perhaps add some more inbetweens to pad it out a bit

I'm really disappointed in myself — I wanted to get the legs completed to a satisfactory standard tonight so I could focus on the arms or something tomorrow. Oh well — there's no sense in working whilst in a flu-induced stupor, it'll just create more problems later on. Let's see what the morning brings!

Sad character walk V3

Here we go again!!

Rather than struggling on editing my old walk cycle, I decided to just start fresh using my old frames as reference. Sometimes it's quicker just to start with a blank canvas — tweaking my old animation was just needlessly complicated and frustrating, because you kind of end up locked into your old mistakes and limited by what's already there... if that makes sense?!

Andy gave me some great advice on the position of the legs. Previously it appeared as if the toes dragged through the ground. Here I've tried to rectify the problem by marking where the hips would be, allowing me to easily give them a little torsion (is that the right word to use?) and lift the leg a little further off the ground, mostly solving the problem.

The mood isn't quite there yet — obviously without inbetweens the timing is off, making it look a bit angry!

I attempted to act out the walk a few times and I noticed that, rather than in a "conventional" cycle where the heel brushes the ground and the foot smoothly strikes the floor, I tended to bring my foot straight down very suddenly. When dragging my feet, my toes were very slow to come off the floor and they were dragged almost reluctantly upwards. I'm going to experiment with this timing by delaying the lift of the toes until the last possible moment when they're dragged upwards before coming straight back down much faster.

It's interesting to note how, without any inbetweens, this walk is very similar to how an "angry" cycle might look. In an angry cycle the character might bring his feet up very fast and slap them straight back down with very little pause — similar to here. This could save me a lot of time later on if, for my angry cycle, I can refer back to this cycle and simply make minor adjustments to timing.

Sad character walk V2

 

I began to attempt cleaning up the lines of my previous attempts and trying to nail the rest of the inbetweens. I'm really, really not at all happy with it. The leg volumes are a little more consistent and I think the timing is very nearly there but it just wasn't working for me at all. 

There are masses of problems with the feet — they don't really flop and drag as I'd like them to. They also delay in the centre of the body at the crossover which looks pretty weird.

Later on, when I attempted to add the body, I found it extremely difficult because I'd drawn the legs first with no consideration of the character's torso. I ended up with all sorts of problems like knees ending up where the chest should be.

 

You can see I struggled — I really couldn't figure out how to fit the body around the legs. That shouldn't have happened; I shouldn't be needing to try and fit things around other things. Everything really just needs to work together. I think it's okay to focus on the movement of one body part at a time but I really need to consider how the character's body will move in relation to the legs.

In general I think I tried to be too refined and controlled with my lines. I need to relax and be a bit looser in these early stages — I think that's why my first attempt had so much more character to it. Despite being flawed and rough, it had a little more personality to it.

Still, as they say, third time's the charm...

Sad character walk — 2nd draft

 

Slowly getting there! Added a lot of inbetweens to smooth things out a bit. It's still quite choppy but I think the timing of the legs is mostly there at this stage, though the feet aren't quite as smooth as I'd like and the volumes are pretty inconsistent. Now that the basic movement is there, though, I can work from that and start tidying things up a bit. 

Something with the legs looks really off to me but I can't quite put my finger on it. It's almost like it seems to fast? I think maybe I've just got some dodgy inbetweens that need fixing up. I'll need to re-check my arcs.

The torso is pretty much just a placeholder and I plan on completely redoing it — I should have left it out, having it waggle about is quite distracting.

"Sad" character walk practice

Knocked out a quick test-type thing earlier today; been on the go hunting for cows and windmills all weekend (more on that later...) so not had much time to sit down and animate solidly.

 

I didn't do much forward planning for this, simply scribbled it out and ran with it. It was mostly an attempt to loosen up a bit and get into the rhythm. It's less than stellar — missing inbetweens all over the place, generally quite messy — but it acts as a sort of framework that I can build from. I'm already able to see what I need to change in order to get the right mood for the character. It's far too quick, for instance. A sad character wouldn't move his legs very fast. He would almost kind of shuffle along with as little leg movement as possible, so I need to look at the timing and try to delay his legs a bit. Make them very slow coming up, a little pause before bringing them back down a little faster and more deliberately.

I think I've got the right kind of idea with the foot dragging and flicking —needs smoothing and refining, but I think it's kind of there? I'm going to film myself (or an unwilling volunteer) as a reference and have another crack at it.