playing around with walks...

I found the readings for this weeks historical and critical studies pretty complex if i'm honest, however discussing them made the concepts clearer. It was good to have quite a debate going on about modern art nowadays and if there is still a place for it, along side the idea of the commodification of goods affecting modernist art - the importance of how the piece is made (methods, brushstrokes, medium) rather then the image created. I found this weeks seminar quite interesting and it was useful to learn more about the origins of various styles of animation and how they were affected by political/economical issues at the time.

With the practical work, having got the basics sorted last week I started to play around with ideas of different walks and how I could change them around and make them a bit more interesting - add character. I started to draw a few rough ones..but managed to do some better ones after Andy explained how best to add emotions into the walks and went through the submitted walk cycles as I could then see what I definately needed to improve. Below are a few examples of the 2D walk cycles I tried...



Above: this is another attempt at a normal walk..i think the arm swing and leg movements have improved on this one, and the bob up and down works much better. Previous to this I was working by thumbnailing out the sequence I wanted and them working through frame by frame. What I now find easier to do is to draw the keyframes, copy them switching the arm and leg (to get the opposite) then doing each in between. This means that the walk is much smoother in the cycle and I find it easier to then work out where you need the inbetweens and also how many for the movement. I therefore did the rest of the 2D cycles using this method.





Above are two similar walks. The first works ok with the arm and leg movement, however for a sad/ depressed walk it's a bit fast with a bit too much movement. I think the second is an improvement time-wise, however it needs a bit more movement in the shoulders to make it sway a little more. It also has a slight twitch in the shoulder where one frame is slightly out that could be changed.



Above: the strut...although this is quite fast i think it works ok. It perhaps needs a bit more urgency in the walk - have the character leaning forwards a little more. The arms are well exaggerated but I think I need to work on the movement and the flick of the hand at the end - could do with another frame cushioning the movement as overlap. There are a few strange movements at the end, but I think this is more to do with me copying frames in the wrong order when repeating them to save it rather then the movement itself. Hopefully I can work on this walk a little more to improve it before submitting it.

3D walks I am starting to find much easier to control and move now that I am more used to how you can move objects around in Maya. Creating walk cycles in 3D I found quite fun and much simpler then I thought it would be. Below are examples of these. Again I have tried a few normal ones trying to improve on them each time I do so, along with experimenting with a few fun ones with a bit more character in them.





Above: These are just normal walk cycles. I am quite pleased with the movement in general, and I think the arms are working quite naturally, however the legs don't look quite right. I exaggerated them quite a lot, but perhaps a bit too much making it look very mechanical.



Above: This is another normal walk however I have changed the speed and leg movement which makes it look easier and a bit more natural. Although I altered the shoulder and hip movement I could perhaps exaggerate this a little more so it is visible when watching the walk from the side angle.



Above is a creeping walk. This was just from playing around with ideas. I think it's quite a comical walk and gives it character, but maybe looks more like she is doing a dinosaur impression with a bad back then actually creeping around!