My 3D Walk Cycle
My first attempt was too fast as the paces didn't stretch over the entire 24 frames which made her legs look unnatural. The dress slightly hides this however the speed was still wrong.
I slowed the footage down to 8fps which made the movement seem more natural however because the dress was so tight and I was nervous it would rip if I exaggerated the steps too much, I kept her strides short so to compensate for this, I should have over-exaggerated the arms more than I did.
If I had the opportunity to make another puppet, I would make one with less limiting clothing and I would also attach her from the hips instead of the back because I felt this limited the movement I had when trying to add overlapping and follow-through actions.
I decided to experiment with pixilation instead. As I struggled to envision what each frame should look like, I instead instructed my friend to slowly walk forward two paces while exaggerating her arms and legs so I could break her walk into 24 frames exactly and see her positioning in each one.
In the lecture for this study task, it was suggested to look at the "building block principles" of the walk cycle. I thought by capturing all 24 frames and then using TV Paint, I could clearly see the extremes and in-betweens and that way, I could break down the animation and "fudge the timing".
I found the 8 frame walk cycle was the one that had the least amount of frames yet still looked the most natural.
Link to 3D Walk Cycle (24 frames)
Link to 3D Walk Cycle (8 frames)
Together, we experimented with several different walks, such as the running man dance and a sumo-style stride however these didn't work out as well. I found the skip to work best.
Similarly to the first pixilation animation I made, I started by capturing all 24 frames in which I over-exaggerated the movement for. I made an effort to clearly step from heel to toe, and also swung my arms out above my head.
I fudged the timing to 8 frames which I felt still looked like a skip, by removing the in-betweens and only keeping the extremes.
However once I removed even more frames to 4 only, I felt the cycle no longer looked like a skip however more of an exaggerated walk (like a brisk, jolly stroll).
Link to 3D Skip Cycle (24 frames)
Link to 3D Skip Cycle (8 frames)
Link to 3D Skip Cycle (4 frames)
My 2D Walk Cycle
Using TV Paint, I sketched a rough blue outline of a man and made him walk across the screen. I only sketched certain key frames as the lesson mainly focused on our ability to fudge the timing.
Over this rough sketch, I animated my character Dorothy with the intention of adding her to my landscape to see how she will marry in the final animation. However, when I tried to export this image sequence and open it in Photoshop, whenever I pressed play, the animation would glitch and strobe different colours in my character's general shape; which admittedly looked really cool however, it wasn't what I was after and also didn't suit my chosen genre.
I fudged the timing to 8 frames as I found in my previous experiments, this was the least amount of frames I could add while the character still looked somewhat natural.
Below is my first attempt at a 2D walk cycle. I am happy with how she marries with the background, especially because I spent extra time adding highlights to her off of the street lamp. However, the rough animation I used as a reference was a little too exaggerated for my character to sit on top of as because my line-art is so neat, without the in-betweens, the strides look too heavy and her body looks too wonky.
Link to 2D Walk Cycle
I decided to have a second attempt at a 2D walk cycle so this time, I used my protagonist and decided to animate all 24 frames to see whether this would make it look less twitchy. Because the 3D model was constrained by her dress, I decided that for the 2D cycle, I would exaggerate her legs more and not let the dress limit her movement, even if this made it less realistic.
If I had more time, I would add follow through actions to her hands as her upper body is quite stiff. However if she is sneaking, I don't feel her upper body would move that much because she would be tensed up. Maybe to make this movement look more natural and gentle, I could slow it down to 12fps.
Link to 2D Sneak Cycle
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