💧 Project 1

Sunday, July 11, 2021

💧 Project 1

14/04/21 - 05/05/21 (Week 3 - Week 6)
Ng Mei Ying (0340563)
Animation Fundamentals
Project 1: Character Walk Cycle (10% Individual)

INSTRUCTION

📌Project 1: Character Walk Cycle

(Week 4) 23/04/21

This week, students were tasked to kick start the character walk cycle animation using the character they had designed according to the story developed in the Flim Study class. In order to have a better understanding of the character walk cycle principle and formula, I had done some further research on creating beginner walk cycle tutorials. I found that a smooth walk cycle animation was basically constructed by 4 key poses: Contact, Down, Passing & Up.

AF Project 1 Tutorials:

Read More: Animation for Beginners: How to Animate a Character Walking

Fig 1.0 Walk Cycle Principle Reference

Fig 1.1 Walk Cycle Principle Reference

(Fig 1.3 ~ Fig 1.5) To start with, I created a rough sketch with the character still body asset as a reference to ensure the body height and the body components were drawn in a consistent size (guidelines were created as well). Furthermore, the draft sketches were drawn in a different layer to differentiate among the ponytail, head, hands, body as well as legs. Below was some working process in Adobe Animate.

Fig 1.3 Walkcycle Draft Sketch in Adobe Animate (jpeg 1)

Fig 1.4 Walkcycle Draft Sketch in Adobe Animate (jpeg 2)

Fig 1.5 Walkcycle Draft Animation in Adobe Animate (Gif)

Feedback: Ms Jen mentioned that the refined walk cycle sketch was fine. However, I should avoid using straight ahead drawing techniques to ensure that the key poses were captured well. Besides, some amendment suggestion was given by Ms Jen upon the sketches as well.

Reflection: I found that it was quite hard to master the pace and the principle to create a believable walk cycle movement at the first stage. It looked as if it's simple to create during the tutorial class. however, I found it as much difficult than I thought. Besides, I was not familiar to draw the walk cycle facing the right direction, and with most of the visual reference on the walk cycle that was mostly oriented in the right direction, I got confused easily when I was trying to draw it in a left-oriented direction as the character seemed to walk backwards.

(Week 5) 30/04/21

(Fig 2.0 & Fig 2.1) After completing all of the motion refinement on the draft sketches for the walk cycle in adobe animate, I proceed to apply the walking poses upon the character asset symbol that had created earlier in the keyframes. (Fig 2.2 & Fig 2.3) On the other hand, a simple background by the seaside with sun and clouds were created to enhance the visual of the walk cycle animation.

Fig 2.0 Character Asset Poses Adjustment in Keyframes (Jpeg)

Fig 2.1 Character Draft Skeleton Walkcycle (Gif - without background)

Fig 2.2 Drawing of Background Environment (Jpeg)

Fig 2.3 Character Draft Skeleton Walkcycle (Gif - with background)

Feedback: M Jen mentioned that I was able to capture the key poses of the character walk cycle well, and it's good to have the subtle movement of the character's ponytail as well as the frontal hair bang. Besides, the lecturer also mentioned that it's not necessary to include the environmental background for this project, and it was considered as an extra effort on the porject. There were no major issues with the movement and the overall animation was good.

(Week 6) 07/05/21

Before submitting this project, the character walk cycle animation had gone through several checking processes to ensure the movement was subtle and consistent. During the checking process, I realised that the movements of the ponytail and the legs were not attached to certain motion points. Hence, Some more guidelines were created during the adjustments to ensure the movement arc of the ponytail and the legs were attached to the motion arc point.

(Fig 3.0 ~ Fig 3.3) On the other hand, I continued to refine the linework of the character's body component in the symbol asset to ensure the outline was connected well. On top of that, multiples lower legs assets with various outline connection were prepared in different keyframe as the alternatives assets to fulfil different character movement requirements. The keyframe number of the selected lower leg asset will be key in the object properties (the looping style will be set to "play single frame for the graphic" to ensure the software only play the selected asset keyframe in had key-in in the object properties panel)