Part 3 - Female Walk Cycle Animation

 

Part 3 - Female Walk Cycle Animation

 

 

I did thoroughly enjoy this animation from start to finish, as It was at this point of the assignment I discovered Richard Williams' book: ''The Animators Survival Kit''. This showed how to add everything related to spacing, timing, blocking, delay, exaggeration, overlapping, you name it, this book shows how its done. Below you can see my working on the cycle with Williams' reference in the background.

 

The book allowed me to keep it solid work flow and this was the first animation I did which looked the strongest and in the least amount of time in comparison with the previous two. It helped me to understand many areas of the body that move during a walk cycle that I would not have initially picked up on. One of the main ones being that when walking our feet usually never leave more that an inch off the floor to conserve energy. Clavicles rotate forwards and backwards, up and down in different passing stages. Below is peer feedback on my walk cycle from the online forum we use on Facebook.

 

Again, not heavy on the comments but my peer pointed out an area I was overlooking. The camera angle emphasized the snap on the arm movement, however it didn't look anywhere near as bad in different positions. Yet the camera angle was in optimum position for the rest of the cycle. When I render this out I will probably have a 360degree camera so the audience can see all aspects of the technicalities. One of the areas I did overlook was the head movement which was recently pointed out to me by my tutor. It kept very straight throughout the cycle. Even though it went up and down in the different stages it did not rock slightly side to side. This looked much more natural when rectified.