Refining the animation - Leisure walk


In the next few blog posts I will be discussing about the problems I have identified in one of my older blog posts (Animation progress status and observed issues) and how I have solved them over the past few weeks. The posts will each be focused on one of the animations separately, starting with the leisure walk animation in this post followed by the sneak, the bold walk and ending with the running animation. I believe that by organising the blog posts in this way will make it easier for me and anybody else to refer back to if necessary, as well as keeping the blog posting constant, tidy and succinct.


The leisure walk

The issues I have identified last time in this first part of the animation chain were that the walk is rather wobbly and some of the steps are unequal.

The seemly unstableness of the model when walking was caused by the excessive movement of specific parts of the body. For example, upon taking a closer look at the first 20 or 30 frames I have noticed that the upper part of the body was rotating too much with each step. The pelvis area of the character was also shaking too much as if the character was supposedly dancing instead of walking. These small details and several more were causing the walk to look shabby and somewhat robotic, as seen in the past video renders.

The asynchronous movement of the upper body and the legs was also making the walk look unnatural, as the hips and the shoulders need to be moving in opposite directions to each other as seen in the reference image below (taken from ‘The Animator’s Survival Kit’ by R. Williams):




Another important factor is the hands and arms movement, which I also had to refine so that it better follows this image, also taken form ‘The Animator’s Survival Kit’ by R. Williams:



There is also the ‘Arc’ animation principle that states that the arms, like a thrown rock affected by gravity move into an arching path when travelling back and forth during a walk or a run. This is a subject I discussed about in my ‘The 12 principles of animation’ blog post. This is what the arms and hands movement looks like now:



I have also encountered a few issues under the form of ‘floating’ steps if I could call them that. During the up and pass poses, the main leg that’s used to push the body up and forward doesn’t come into contact with the ground, making the character look like it’s floating:



However, I have since taken care of the issue and now the feet come into contact with the ground as it should. Doing this also allowed me to re-establish the travel distance between some of the steps, making them look more equal than before:



After the final touches I can say that the walk definitely looks better than before. Here is what the leisure walk animation looked like before and how it looks after:

Before


After


References:

Williams, R. (2001). The Animator's Survival Kit. Unites States of America: Macmillan USA, pp.102-216.


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