Jump Cycle

Throughout the animation tutorials I have been given I have started to gain more skill relevant to character rigging and character manipulation, even though my animations are still a bit sketchy and no of the highest standard, I understand the principles and how to create an effective animation overall. On the other hand I do have some issues trying to execute said animation effectively.

Below are three animations i have made, one is viewed in two perspectives, these are our jump animations that we have been asked to animate as one of our tasks.

Animation 1 - Standard Jump

Animation 2 - Leap Jump (experimentation)

Animation 3 - Leap Jump (Alternate Perspective)

Emotions and Poses

In the last week we have been disguising different types of poses and expressions, to see how to make characters look more natural and make them come to life with a few simple rules.

Task 5 - Character poses

For this task i have had to come up with some different unique poses using the Max character rig, I think this has been a very enjoyable experience and its helping me to understand the rig a lot better as i work with it more. I have come up with about 6 different poses that i think will work well.

Max Angry

Max Sad

Max holding a torch in the dark

Max in Shock

Max Thumbs Up!

Max Thinking

Walk Cycles

Recently in my practicals, I have been introduced into the different aspects of Inverse and Forward Kinematics, also referred to as IK and FK. This delves into walk cycles and how the best way to animate a character rig gives you an excellent result.

Inverse Kinematics works on a on a target system where you control certain joints of the body using the X, Y and Z axis. Although this is a very good technique of animation, it is a little sketchy because it doesn't deal with natural curves of the body, and fluid movements.

This is where Forward Kinematics kicks in, Instead of using a targeting system where you place where the limbs will be, it uses a rotational system, so when it comes to getting a nice fluent swinging arm movement  when a character is walking, you can rotate the shoulder and it will create a nice arc instead of a blocky movement.

Task 4 - Walk Cycles

For my fourth task I have been issued a brief where i am supposed to create a accurate walk cycle, this means i have had to take into consideration different types of poses and movements, a lot of reference has been looked upon before i made my animation. 

Here you can see a clip of a 124 frame animation , lasting one second, which is the standard length for a walk cycle when it comes to animating a character. 

Here i have added a little more life to the walk cycle to make it seem more natural, I have started to manipulate the arm movements more.

Here is the walk cycle at a slightly different angle.