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Sanjay sen
Human and
Creature Mechanics
Research
Research
Walk Cycle
Before starting doing any animation, I always need to find any information about how to animate it.
There are four key poses in a typical walk cycle; the Contact, the Pass, that Down and the Up point, which returns back to the Contact, but with a different leg.
However, there is a lot of in-between key poses which must be placed only after completing the main key poses.
Also as I noticed and going to use in future animations, the most important thing in it is when and how feet contact the ground. Especially the most important moments when it takes off the ground and when goes down and made the first touch.
AlanBeckerTutorials (2015) ALAN BECKER - Animating Walk Cycles
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y6aVz0Acx0&ab_channel=AlanBeckerTutorials (Accessed: 18 January 2022)
The walk of this or that character can tell the viewer a lot about them, their origin and their way of life. It is one of the small but extremely important features of character design. Just like, for example, by the hands of a person, you can roughly understand what kind of activity he is engaged in.
The guitarist has corns on the fingertips on his left hand, the worker has short and sloppy nails and the skin of the hands is extremely rough, the miners and locksmiths are about the same, but there is usually a lot of dirt under the nails, seamstresses usually have small traces of needles on the fingertips, artists' hands are often in pencil or paint, etc.
Bac Le (2013) Pongo judges other dogs - 101 Dalmatians
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulsjuiFO2J0&ab_channel=BacLe (Accessed: 27 January 2022)
In this animation, the animators managed to convey this feature of the walk very well, since each character has his unique walk. You can also roughly judge their personality by the shapes that are used in their design.
Julia Morgan (2021) 3D Angry Walk Cycle
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0utXjiLvos&ab_channel=JuliaMorgan (Accessed: 27 January 2022)
Kevin Parry (2017) 3D Angry Walk Cycle
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEoUhlesN9E&ab_channel=KevinParry (Accessed: 27 January 2022)
For my personal walk cycle, I chose to try and combine elegance and a little bit of angry walk. Just because I thought it would be more challenging to do a combination.
There are some of the recorded video references.
Push animation
A push animation can be very similar to a walk cycle. But here as I think is a more important look at the feet and body position. In my animation, I build most of the keyframes around feet position, and only secondly I look at the body. Legs and arms usually in push creates all force that moves objects, however, it's a much more complex movement. Because there is also a huge role plays the spine.
If we look closer, the human body in push looks more similar to spring.
If a character can move an object, it usually on flat surface moves as the character makes a step forward. And based on that I chose structure's main key poses on feet movement.
And here is my reference video.
Prototyping
Prototyping
Walk Cycle
Starting from the main key poses.
As it was mentioned before, according to the "Animator survival kit" there are 4 key poses at the start.
All poses and in-between poses are complete. I notice that it would be easier for me if this reference would be marked in-between poses. However because that animation is quite short, it wasn't such a big deal for now.
I did fail at changing up's and downs with his belly. So it looks strange. However this is the problem of in-between poses, if there where more of them, it would be better.
And the result of polishing animation.
personal Walk Cycle
For me, it was quite tricky to make a good walk reference where I would be able to combine by myself two walk types. however, after choosing the best one I started work.
With different colours, I marked the main poses
Yellow - Contact
Blue - Down
Red - Passing
Green - Up
In the process, I completed all key poses and start adding in-betweens. But I faced a problem at this stage. My 3D model didn't touch the ground at the same time as reference me do. So I Also placed some more poses that will mutch reference in this.
In the end, I still do not pleased with the result. Sometimes legs are twitching and move strangely. I tried to fix it, and remake all in-between poses all over again. It helped, but sometimes this poping knees is still noticible.
And here is the result of my hard work. I definitely need more practice in walk animation.
Push animation
And again, I started with the Key poses.
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Personal Push animation
This animation was even harder.
And again, with different colours, I marked the main poses
Yellow - main key poses
Blue - feet takes off the ground
Pink - Passing
Light Blue - Feet start touch the ground
Yellow poses were done first, as they were key poses, at the same time I moved the closet. So I stick with the walking strategy. If the character moves forward, it's better to build all animation step by step, do not just do some poses and at the end made, the model move to a different corner of the screen.
Evaluation
Evaluation
This term has not been easy. I would be glad if other circumstances in my life would not prevent me from completing it one hundred per cent.
However, it still seems to me that I could do with just more time to analyze the references and polish the final works.
Apart from this, the fact that we meet "Unreal Engine" once a term obviously does not bring me any knowledge, I forgot everything that we learned in the first term, due to the lack of time we spend going through it. I could not even properly place the animation and the environment in the program (I simply could not remember how to place the light without the help of the video).
If you learn the Unreal Engine, then you definitely need a lot more time and attention for this, and not do something fragmentarily, so that later you can forget it in a couple of months.
Final work
fINAL wORK
Walk Cycle
personal Walk Cycle
Push animation
Personal Push animation
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