Hello everyone! I have finished my 10 second club animation for class and have started a new project. I had said I was going to take a break from 3d and do 2d for a bit, but I got bored while waiting for the weekend to come (I work on 2d @ Monty on the weekends since the rooms are free). I decided to try some quadruped(sp?) animation this time. It's no where near finished, but I will continue my habit of posting my progress as I go along. Please let me know what you guys think. :D
http://studentpages.scad.edu/~jcofer20/catWalk.avi
Everything is still linear since I haven't gotten all of the poses in. I've noticed that the animation is slower in the playblast than it was when I hit play on Maya's time slider. Does anyone know why that's happening?
"Animation isn't about how well you draw, but how much to believe." -Glen Keane
Nice weight and recoil. Land one "foot" at a time, one outstretched to catch and absorb the shock for the other one right before it's going to hit, and see what that brings to the animation.
Thanks Scattered. I have him landing one foot at a time. I had the second leg higher so that it was very clear that he lands that way, but my friend said it should be closer to the contact leg. If you watch it frame by frame you'll see that it's one foot at a time. I can pull the second leg up if I need to. What do you think?
"Animation isn't about how well you draw, but how much to believe." -Glen Keane
It should be in the same relative position to potentially absorb impact, but I strongly disagree with your friend. Even if he were correct, this is WAY too understated for animation, so in essence I even disagree with it being a foot at a time.
Yes, technically, one frame there's a foot and then the next frame there's another, but for all intents and purposes this is both feet at the same time. It's splitting hairs. The difference is so nominal that it's felt and not seen, and my point was getting it so that it "reads" to a viewer, clearly, as one leg/foot at a time.
I'd have his shoulders oppose the hip angle you'd use to stretch the leg farther (he'd be trying to get to the ground as soon as possible).
I had to switch to Quicktime to see the frame-by-frame, but if I was going to tweak it I'd also take a look at the hands. They swing down and actually appear to decelerate before touching the ground. What I think must be happening is he doesn't actually need them for support since he has such huge guns for thighs, but in that case I'd go back and maybe so some angles for the feet against the ground (it's unmoving verticals as it stands) to illustrate the immense weight they're taking on. Just imagine if the feet -had- toes on this guy. He'd either lose them or stub them so hard they'd be crushed, -unless- they were out of the way, in which case the ends of the feet would show some signs of inertia from gravity acting on them and pushing the body against them.
Really wordy but you follow?
Thanks again for the crit Scattered! I brought the second foot up so that it's clearer that they hit the ground at different times. I also tilted the shoulders per your suggestion, to give him some contrapposoto as he falls. I dont see what you are talking about with the hands slowing down. I tried tilting the torso back further but that just put more force in his landing and made it look quite painful. I dont know what you ment when you talked about the feet angles but I rotated the feet so that the "heel" contacts and then the rest of the "foot" comes down.
http://studentpages.scad.edu/~jcofer20/alienLand2.avi
"Animation isn't about how well you draw, but how much to believe." -Glen Keane
Try slowing it down, the speed makes it look unreal. But very nice
About the hands. I took a piece of paper and basically charted where the center of the palm was as it descended, and before it hits the ground it slows way down. It's a bit clearer in the second one that they -are- in fact less about functional bracing for impact and more about stability. I just was thinking more along the lines of the hands would either go into bracing mode, or keep going fast until the ground interrupted their path of movement. The torso would be kind of irrelevant, and I honestly don't follow, so chalk that one up to miscommunication.
Incidentally though, it's entirely believable and possibly necessary that he experience -some- pain given the momentum with his mass.
About the feet...It looks like his "feet" are those big cylinders. The bottom being where the toes come out of our feet, except he has no toes, and the top being where the butt of our heel is located. I am saying with the weight coming down (even though the second half of the anim would mask a lot of it) the weight could push on his feet such that, having nowhere to go, it would have the heel angle back, the "front of the foot" remaining the stable, dug-in, piece. Imagine this in profile (well, YOU can watch it in Maya that way, so go watch it)....in profile, it would be like his feet were 90 degrees, and I'm saying gradually bring the heel back so that, it would be 45 degrees to the left (is that -45 degrees?). Or if you're thinking frontal, the heel goes farther from us and down a bit, rotating about the centerpoint of the feet. I'd draw a picture but I can't be on long.
Good luck, and you're gonna kick my arse but I might even consider further accentuation of the single-leg bit. Not by much though: keep everything exactly the same, but rotate the knee up, so the thigh's less parallel to the screen and more of a steeper angle to us. the angle between thigh and calf/bottom-of-leg is great, as it the foot to the bottom of the leg itself.
Thanks for the advice Scattered! I worked on the alien during class today. I wont upload the clip just yet, as someone from cgtalk wants to see it from a different angle so I'm still touching things up. I raised the second leg even higher and rotated it as you said. I also tilted the feet and I worked on the hands. You'll see all of that when I upload my next up-date. :D
"Animation isn't about how well you draw, but how much to believe." -Glen Keane
No one has any comments?:o
"Animation isn't about how well you draw, but how much to believe." -Glen Keane
hi,
there isn't much anything to comment about,
there is no real walk, just the starting position,
but yet it still looks mechanicle.
how about looking at real life videos of how cats/animals walks/act.. ?
it will help alot.
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Thanks Shany! I dont know why I even posted the cat thing. I did it when I was feeling bad about my lack of animation skill so the whole thing is full of pity. I doubt I'll work on it again. To replace it I'll upload what I've been working on for the past two days!
http://studentpages.scad.edu/~jcofer20/alienLand.avi
I had started this last week when I was bored and with no intention to finish it, but yesterday when I showed it to my friend he decided to help me make it better. I figured I could work on it since he took the time to give me some suggestions. :) I had trouble getting him into the spiderman-ish pose that he's in at the end since he doesn't really have feet. The hands were giving me grief too since they didn't want to stick to the ground and because his arms are too short for him to bounce in that pose. I've animated the tail but you can't really see it.:( What do you guys think?
"Animation isn't about how well you draw, but how much to believe." -Glen Keane