Walk cycle 3

Here is a third attempt at a walk cycle, I measured the leg length of both the upper and lower leg so that he wouldn't get shorter and the legs would stay the same length, I also added arms and kept them the same length like with the legs, I tried to do it with the body but he bends down when he hits the ground to show the force of the impact so that was harder to do.

        There are quite a few problems with the arms, first of all they look very jerky and seem to clump around the keyframes, so I will have to go back and change that. When his foot hits the ground his body bends and this makes it appear as though his arms grow longer making him temporarily apelike, plus I don't like how the hands suddenly move. Other than that I am pretty happy with this, especially the legs as they don't seem to jump any more.

Walk cycle 2

OK So here is another walk cycle, the only thing that I can spot that is glaringly obvious is that the leg that the character is standing on wobbles from about frame 14 to frame 23. I also think that the passing position on the foreground leg goes to fast, because it seems to jump a little bit. The knee circle also seems to jump around quite a lot I have noticed.

I think I will go back and change the wobbling leg, and perhaps play around a bit with the spacing so that the passing position is longer/more obvious. I will try to change the knee's but they aren't my biggest concern at the moment.

Flash Walk cycle

Ok so I thought that I'd just knock up a quick walk cycle on flash as the animation room is locked during weekends I believe.

I am actually quite happy with this one, it seems quite smooth and I like the amount of bounce on the body, although I have noticed that the body keeps changing shape and size so it seems a little squashed, also the feet keep going below the line of the floor which isn't that big of a problem but it sort of irritates me. 

The pace is also very slow and stately so I could play around with the frame rate a little bit.

I am going to add arms and make a few changes to the body so it doesn't shrink, then I may experiment with different frame lengths and character poses.

Lip sync update

Ok so you may have noticed that I took all of the things about what I have done for my lipsync down apart from the hand drawn stuff, this is because it was just taking to much time, as much as I love blender it is difficult for me at this stage to do a proper piece of animation on it, so I shall hand draw it all in flash, using a drawn version of my demon character.

I want to finish of my walk cycles first as they are key, and I completely forgot about doing them when we had to do lip syncs so I will make a few of them first and when I have got one that I am happy with I will move onto lip syncs.

I have also got a copy of The Animators Survival Kit and will be scouring it for useful information, regarding walk cycles and lip syncs.

Lip Sync "Shoot The Duck"

Ok you can pretty much ignore the last post! because I did a different (and more annoying) part of the sound file which goes "Shoot the Duck! Shoot the Duck!". This is just a test which is why only his mouth/eyes move and why its not really a character is just kinda a blob with eyes and a nose and a mouth. I just wanted to see how hard it would be...it was pretty tough and it still doesn't look all that good. When it comes to doing the proper one I may use Blender just because I can.

Also the sound is a little bit of the lip sync.

Lip Sync

We have been given an .mp3 file containing some dialogue which we have t do a lip sync for. I have seen the video on Youtube  so I have an idea of what is actually going on. In the video there are three characters: Bugs Bunny who says "Quack Quack" Daffy Duck who says the rest of the dialogue and Elmer Fudd who shoots Daffy.

Even though we don't have to do the whole thing I think I am still going to design three characters. Although I will probably start of just designing one.

There are three different ways of doing mouths: with no teeth or tongue, with no teeth but a tongue and with both teeth and tongues. I am going to start of just having the mouth with no teeth of tongue just to get the basic idea.

Walk cycle 1

Here is my first attempt at a walk cycle, there are quite a few issues as is to be expected in the first one but I don't think its all that bad.

The hands are the worst bit as I couldn't decide what shape to put them so the shape basically changes every frame which results in the flickering look, also when he goes up it does kind of jump, plus I think he goes to high considering how low down the foot is at its highest point.

I also noticed that the whole body changes angle imbetween frames 8 and 10, and that often the position of the knee cap often shifts around...making the upper part of the leg longer than the shorter. I also think that the arms need to move more as they pretty much stay locked in the same shape and the whole arm rotates. So I will have a look at that.

The frame rate could also do with slowing down, perhaps to 12 fps as it almost looks like he is running.

I am going to make a few changes to this walk cycle and reshoot it, if I'm not 100% happy with it I will start a new one, without arms shoot it at all the different stages-keyframes, then keyframes with one imbetween imbetween them then with more imbetweens etc.