Author: Elizaveta Kuznetsova

Body Mechanics Polish

This week we are still working on our body mechanics animation. I fixed problems with timing and spacing which were still present in the previous version. I also paid attension ro the swinging after landing to make it look more realistic. On the final stage I also adapted where model’s knees and elbows are facing and added more offset keys to them to exaggerate power with which the model jumps and lands.

Project Proposal

Last week I had problems with timing and spacing, especially on the highest point of the jump. I also had to work with arcs more as they looked quite unnatural.

In this new version I tried to fix that slow and gradual fall. I moved arcs in order to recreate the lelenth of the jump.

This week we worked not only with blocking but with spline version. Blocking helped to put key poses because this animation is complex, whereas spline helped to make this animation smooth and gradual.

Body mechanics is what our body does mechanically in terms of weight shifts, feet placement, posture and movement.

While trying to recreate body mechanics in animation, it is essential to look closely at the reference. We should not copy the reference to every second but it helps us to learn from, and to gain knowledge and understanding of how your objects moves, whether it’s a human or an animal.

And here is the first raw blocking stage of my animation of the jump.

This week we continue to improve our walk cycle. This time we did animation in spline.

Baesd on the feedback, I had to space legs out more. However, because of that I had which to bring the overall translation y down.

This is how the new version looks like.

Hand Gesture in Animation

Last week we started discussing hand gestures, and this week we delved in this topic even more. Hands are very expressive part of our body, in terms that they tend to express our emotions while we talk or move. Hands always do something. In order to make hands gestures look good, you have to take into consideration clear and organic shape, inter – connectivity, leading finger, and grooping.

Assignment for this week was to pose expressive hand poses.

Critiquing Step

This week I received feedback on my step motion from the last week. The thing I need to work on is arcs while stepping from one leg to another.

This one is the new version where I fixed motion arcs while ‘hips’ are moving.

Walk Cycle

Now, when we finished with our steps, we can move to the walking cycle. I must say that this was hard but we made through it. The task was to animate basic walk so we could focus more on the focus on how the hip and legs work. This helped with better understanding of the hierarchy between them. We needed to animae the full cycle for a walk is the point from which one contact frame “cycles through” 1 time until it gets back to the first contact frame 2.

And this is my final animation.

Pose to Pose

The previous version of my pose-to-pose animation was too complex, thus, I had to simplify the action and make it more smooth.

P.S. Hand Poses

This week we swithed from the golden poses to the hand poses. I studied how hands and hands alone can impress characters emotions and their personality.

So this time I decided to use my own hand as a reference.