Project 2 - Emotive Walk Cycle

For the second part of project 2, i have decided to do on Question 2,  which shows the character's personality/attitude while walking. I have chosen to animate the character with an "act-cool" and arrogant personality. The animations are shown as below.

Front angle

Left angle

Right angle

For this animation, I made use of the first part of project 2 (the standard walk cycle). I edited the animation from there. I started off by editing my character's pelvis/hips values. At frames 6 and 24, i brought the value of translate Y down so that when my character walks forward, his hips/pelvis area will move downwards, allowing him to give off a very upbeat and hyper character. After that, i adjusted my character's arms. I focused more on the shoulder area. I rotated the arms accordingly (towards his chest) so that whenever the character swings his arm forward, that particular arm would move backwards, making my character look like it is walking with a lot of pride. I also rotated the characters arms away from his chest when he swings them away from him. This is to depict an arrogant personality and to give off an "act-cool" vibe. Next, i straightened and aligned the character's elbows whenever he swings his arms forward. I then adjusted the values for his fingers. I slightly opened the character's fist whenever he swings his arms out. In order to show that my character is arrogant, i emphasized the personality by adjusting the angles of his head as he walks. I rotated my character's head slightly higher than normal, and made him look left, and right, and then to the left. I have also rotated his chest to the left (when he brings his right feet forward) and to the right (when he brings his left feet forward). While doing this project, I have learnt to be extra careful with the positions of the setting of keyframes. I equalized the value on the timeline so that my character does not jerk at any part and does not display any awkward movements. This will make my animation look smoother when i allow the animation to playback.

This project has taught me a lot of things. One of the most important things it has taught me is how important it is to make animations look real and act realistically as possible. I have also come to realize that we MUST animate every part of the character's body if we would like to animation to look as real as possible as well as to give off the emotion it wants to present.

Different types of emotive cycles will require different steps to be taken. Things to be taken into consideration would be the character's body positions, the way the arms swing, the length of duration and the positions of keyframes of when you would like a limb to step forward, whether or not the whole feet should touch the ground it should tiptoe, or how much angle you would need to tilt the character's head to to show a certain type of emotion etc.

I am satisfied with the what i have created and i believe i still do have rooms for improvement, i am proud that my hard work has been paid off. This part of project 2 is relatively tedious for me because there were no guides or lecture slides provided and I had to source for my own references, which i did (I used YouTube videos and online tutorials as a guide to help me come out with my final animation). After having completed this project, I am more confident in animating 3D characters now and with hard work and patience, no matter how difficult it is to animate a certain character and make its movements and actions as real as possible, it is always possible.

Project 2 - Standard Walk Cycle

Front angle

Left angle

Right angle

In this assignment, i have created this man walking forward. I followed the slides provided by Mr Douglas closely and used the powerpoint slides as a guide to create this animation. I must say that the slides were very useful and of good help.

This was provided in one of the slides given. I made use of this to adjust the character's pelvis/hip movement as the character moves (Translate Y). This was a very useful guide for me when i was trying to coordinate the leg movements with the key frames.

This was provided in one of the slides given too. I find that this was extremely helpful when it comes to animating the whole 36 frames where i had to coordinate both legs and hands movements. 

I made use of the guide above (also provided in powerpoint slides by Mr Douglas) to set the hands and legs positions at the respective number of frames. This has helped me save up on time while creating the animation. 

I feel that this walk cycle was relatively tedious to do. I spent a lot of time making my character walk smoothly. I started off by making my character take a step forward. I did so by making my character's left leg move forward first. After which, i made the character's left leg move forward. While doing so, I have learnt that it is highly important to divide the keyframes equally (i have used 36 frames per cycle in this walk cycle). We also have to animate the character to make it walk/move smoothly by making sure that at frames 0, 18 and 36, the legs, heels, hands and hip positions are set to the same units so that my character looks like it is walking smoothly (at frame 18, i had to set the respective units at frame 0 to my character's opposite legs and hands. However, at frame 0 and 36, my character's legs and hands will have the same input units because these are the frames where my character starts and stops respectively. This is an advantage for me because at the end of doing this animation, i looped the video.). For the character's arms to move smoothly as well as to show that the character is walking at ease, i made sure that when the left leg is taking a step forward, the character's right arm will swing forward. When the character's right leg is taking a step forward, his left arm will swing forward. This simply allows the character to look naturally while talking a walk. In, i have adjusted the character's fingers as well. As we all can see, my character will slightly open and close his hands as he walks. This was done so by selecting the respective fingers and adjusting the various units to help make my character look natural. At this stage of completion, I still felt that my character was a little stiff. I then added on a head movement where my character's head slightly bobs up and down as he walks to show that he is comfortable walking and that he is not having a neck-ache. I have also shifted this check forwards a little as he walks to show that his body is being brought forward as he is walking. Also, I have looped my animation and repeated the frames to the 180th frame to ensure that my video lasts for 5 seconds. This was a very interesting project to work on, and i definitely enjoyed the whole process because I have learnt to create a walk cycle without much help from my peers and lecturer, and this has certainly given me a sense of achievement. Although i have spent a lot of time with this part of project 2, I am very pleased and satisfied with my animation and i am even more motivated to move on to the second part of project 2. :)