Category: Body mechanics
Progress:
I originally plan to practice walk to sit and stand to walk actions, which are basic body mechanics movements.
But Ting thought it was too much workload, so I cut it to stand and walk only.
I studied the human shape walk cycle online and made my own version. I learnt deeper about how the human body can be performed as a bouncing ball.
Then, based on Ting’s advice, I made the character more cartoonish by adding more reasonable overlapping for different parts of the body. I understand that from root to head is a pendulum or squirrel tail, the leg and arm are also tails that the upper part will drag the lower part. And I come up with the idea by using the blue pencil tool in Maya to draw the overlapping guideline, and also the line of action that I want for root control. Here is what I got:
Key poses: In a walk these would be your CONTACT poses.
Breakdowns: The passing position between your KEY POSES.
Extremes: These are the highest and lowest points of the walk.
after polish:
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Week5: weight shifting
Analyze walk cycles and weight distribution: Everyone has a unique walk influenced by factors like character, health, age, and gender. Walk cycles remain one of the most challenging tasks for animators.
Balance and weight distribution check (COG): To ensure a pose is balanced, draw a line through its center—if both sides have equal positive space, the pose is balanced.
first try:
After polish:
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Week4: Polish tail
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Week3: Anticipation
Anticipation is a mechanical build up for FORCE:
- It’s important to understand now that all movement is
created by forces, either external or internal. Anticipation
is the most natural way to build up internal force in order
to execute dynamic motion. - Bill Tytla, legendary animator, says “Any animation consists
of anticipation, action, and reaction.” - “An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted on
by an unbalanced force.”
Follow the K.I.S.S. principle (“Keep It Simple, Stupid”) and learn the rules before breaking them.
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Week 2: Pendulum
Planning:
- I focus on the overlapping action of the tail of the pendulum, and each joint is 2-4 frames delay in succession.
- I did 2 anticipation actions before the pendulum move forward.
- I did a few follow-through actions to slow down the pendulum.
animation:
Categories
Week 1: bouncing ball
Planning: I take reference from basketball, try to have stretch and squash not too heavy but in the proper place. And I pay attention to the ending follow-through that the ball has a slight pullback.
animation:
Feedback from George:
- The angle of the arc for each bounce can be smaller
- The rotation of the ball should be aligned vertically on the motion trail
- The pullback of the ball in the end should decrease the translation
Revised version: