Walk on 2's

A walk cycle copied from an image sequence from Google.

Sway

I captured photo reference for this animation. I did not rotoscope, I observed form and movement and from this I noticed two types of motion. One was horizontal being a flat arcing at the pelvis. The other was a loop following the path of the hand. From considering these movements in the form of a loop, I was able to connect each cycle with a consistent flow.

Mouse Melancholy

Here I was inspired to make an opposite of the Mouse Laugh. I decided to go for a mid-shot into close-up. I hope people can recognise the type of action that I have intended my character to expresses.

Mouse Laugh

This is an exercise from Animation Factory I completed as an in-betweening exercise. I was given five key positions and had to work out the rest of the movement from those. As the head abducts from the torso the perspective changes slightly - this was hard to achieve and had to be planned out because I was not familiar with the character design, so had to concentrate on keeping the facial features look the same in each frame.

Walk Cycle - 1st Attempt

The original task on the brief was to create a generic walk cycle but this is tangent from that.

I was drawing loosely at first, trying to get a feel for the key movements in a walk. I then decided to go ahead and in-between so here is the result of my first walk cycle! Ron said I had incorporated a sense of character (which was what we were told NOT to do) though I was not consciously aware of doing this while I was animating.

During the brief Ron also explained and acted out the 'Timber' and 'Catching' effect of each step a person takes. When I tried applying this method to my walk, it became apparent that this was what was adding to much character.

Bouncing Ball - 1st Attempt

Here is my first attempt at animating a bouncing ball. I've noticed I haven't allowed enough time for the overall journey of the ball; the timing and spacing of the initial bounces are okay but towards the end the ball comes suddenly to a halt.

To improve the way the ball stops I will add in extra frames showing a few more tiny bounces at the end and a short rolling to a point then, as Ron suggested to me in the group critique, back then forward again a few times. I can imagine this movement is intended to convey either an unevenness of weight distribution within the mass of the ball, or to show a shallow concave in the surface structure on which the ball is rolling, even though I have drawn it flat and level. Or it might just be a nice way to show a final dissipation of the ball's energy - at ground level.