BlogPost 10: Final Project (Part 1) - Walk Cycle

For the first part of the final project, we are tasked to animate a complete walk cycle of a model. Using the Joe-Rig model, I tried my best to display and meet all the requirements of this project. Several things are to be seen in this animation.

1. Balance
2. Understanding of Locomotion
3. Weight Distribution
4. Pace & Timing

I kept reminding myself with these requirements to produce a better animation at the end of this project. Several different parts of the body have to be looked at. Hands and legs are very critical to make the animation look very smooth, with the up and down motion of the head, shoulder, spine, hip and the entire body to show weight when each step is taken and when each leg is lifted away from the ground. Swaying of the head, spine, hip and shoulders are made to allow a more realistic mood for my animation.

First, I started creating key poses for the animation. With the following image references of different walk cycles, I was able to create the walk cycle successfully.

 Walk Cycle Reference 1

 

 Walk Cycle Reference  2

Making the key poses are quite simple but yet difficult at times as the rig may not be able to move as flexible as the people in the images show above. These key poses are very important as they may affect the entire outcome of the animation in terms of weight distribution, balance and realism.

Next, I head on to fill in the "in-between" frames between each key pose, adding details such as sudden drop of the head to show the character stepped onto the floor. Moving the frames into different positions so that there is a sense of acceleration seen in the animation, and then slowly slowing down to a complete stop. The movement of the wrist allows realistic arm movement by showing there's both weight and motion when the entire body is walking.

I've looked into the head of the animation to show a more obvious stepping motion every time the leg touches the ground to show realistic weight in motion.

Through all these steps, I was able to complete the project successfully. However, if given more time, I believe that I would be able to do more for the animation such as adding in a background/environment that the animation could be in and creating footstep sound to make it into a complete animation. However, I am going overseas on the 16th of December which shorten my "Personal Dateline" by 3 days. Even so, I feel that I've learned and understood a lot more about animation and also further increased my passion in creating animation for movie productions or just plain making movies in the future.

 

This is the result of this project in Perspective View.

 

This is the result of this project in Side View.