Walk Cycle – (RW Generic Walk)

Blocking out the first key poses of the 24 frame walk cycle.

Richard Williams referencing to create this generic walk.

Working in Maya.

Frames 1, 4, 7, 13, 16, 19 and 25.

Frames 1, 4, 7, 13, 16, 19, 22 and 25.

Walk Cycle (RW- Generic Walk)

Blocking out the key poses of the 24 frame walk cycle.

Looking at Richard Williams work as reference in creating this generic walk.

Did some thumbnail sketches for planning out the movements.

Working in Maya

Frames 1, 13 and 25.

Frames 1, 7, 13, 19 and 25.

Blocking Out Poses

I decided to position the rigged character in the famous Karate kick pose – from the first Karate Kid film.

Blocking Out Poses

With an already rigged out figure, we were tasked to position the character to match the given reference image (the smug smile pose). This task helped us understand the body a bit more, and the rigging set-up. We needed are poses to show a clear understanding of weight and it’s distribution across the body.

Bouncing Ball – Bowling Ball

I recorded the dropping of a bowling ball from the height of 1 meter onto a plank of wood (this was to represent the floor of a bowling alley)

Using the footage above as reference when animating in Maya.

Started with a blocking out of the key movements of the bowling ball. Leaving the ball rotation for later.

I then used the Graph Editor to work out the momentum of the ball, as it accelerates down and decelerates slowly throughout the sequence to a stop. Working out the timings of the arcs was a tricky in places of high speed, as it was coming across a bit jumpy. So for the purpose of having the movement clear for the viewers to register I smoothed out the pacing. Even though it was now not following the speed of the reference footage.

Satisfied with the movement of the ball bounce so far, I then went into blocking out the rotations. Considering the weight of the object and the speed it is traveling, I worked out that there would be a limited amount of rotation occurring. After this I went back into the Graph Editor, this time adjusting the rotations, to help give the sense of the ball rolling rather that gliding across the screen.

 

Winsor McCay – Infographic

50 second animation in After Effects about Winsor McCay.

Animating a Hammer in Maya

Tasked to animate a hammer taking 3 hits to get a nail into a plank of wood.

Used the tools we learnt previously to rotate the hammer in a swinging motion, with the use of key frames (S) to save the key moments in the action. We started off just blocking out the moves, and later learned how to use the animation graph editor, to play with the momentum and timing of the motion, to help give a more realistic weight to the action.

Experimenting with adjusting the vertex of the nail head. To show the hammer damaging the nail in the process of hammering it down into the wood.

Modeling an Alarm Clock