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...)

Stair climbing V1

Hopefully I'm not going to jynx it, but I had a much better day today. Managed to get the stair climbing all drafted out and ready to go!



I'm not sure why but Vimeo appears to have skewed the frame rate/overall duration very slightly but hey-ho. It took me a while to get the hip rotation right (major thanks to Ron for suggesting it!) but I'm actually fairly pleased with the results.

It's far from perfect of course, I'm sure there are still countless things I could fix, but I think it's working. I'm satisfied that I've managed to actually do something and get results. Dare I say it, I might even be a very teensy-tiny bit proud that I managed to keep working despite how crappy I've been feeling.

Anywho — unfortunately he's just an egg with legs at the moment... next I have the challenge of the arms and head. I'm actually quite pleased with the little drawing at the beginning of him standing at the foot of the stairs. It sounds daft but I'm hoping that it might help me to balance out the first walk cycle a little bit!

Touch wood that this good streak continues...

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.

Assorted character tests

I was getting really quite stressed and upset over the stupid walk cycle so I took a step back and moved onto something else to give my brain a break. I ended up knocking out some very quick tests in Flash which made me feel a bit better.

I found that animating in Flash is distinctly less stressful than Photoshop. I think because it's actually an animation software — the onion skin makes things much easier in terms of figuring out movement and such. In Photoshop you lack the ability to view previous frames at once which makes things significantly more difficult.

That being said, these are still pretty crude but at least I'm beginning to sort of get somewhere.

This is a test from the scene after he reaches the top of the stairs. Originally I wanted him to sort of scuttle along the rail but I figured that a slow sort of sliding-creep thing would be more fitting.

I shot it again on 2s which I think looks a bit better:

Still needs inbetweens and cleaning up, but it's mostly just a test for the movement and such.

I also started messing around with the ball kicking idea:

It's little more than a few quick scribbles but I'm just trying to nail the poses and rough movement. It's very difficult — I'm having trouble working out how to get the actual kick to have any power. I want the kick to be pretty exaggerated and then have him come forward, back down onto his kicking leg, straight into the next walk cycle. Don't know how easy that will be.

I dunno. I'm still feeling pretty crummy about the whole thing. I really don't even know what's wrong with me — I'm just having such difficulty finding my feet with this project. Feeling very overwhelmed with it all!

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!