lucasdegani: Class 1 - Week 8: Introduction to Walk

Class 1 - Week 8: Introduction to Walk

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Pheew... Second full month completed. In the previous week we had something organic like a tail, also we gave personality to the ball owner. This week we have something more human: walk! Above, my mentor teaching me to walk (rereading and inspired by De'Von Stubblefieldem). This exercise has it's own special importance.

"C'mon.. What is the difference of everything we've had so far?"

I'll tell you why. Walking can say who you are. Can say about your mood. Often you express what you are feeling with words. On walk you can express it all! Try to see Goofy walking. You can clearly tell that he's a dummy just like the way he walks. And you never have a walk like another. The possibilities are endless!

The purpose of this week was to animate a Vanilla Walk, which means a no personality walk.Watch people on street and you'll understand what this is about. They all ilustrate something like this:

Reminding the previous exercises, you will notice that the body risesand falls like a boucing ball.

"Hmm, you are right. I'm sorry to say that balls are not important to be animated..."

As boucing balls, animate a basic walk is part of the process to understand these steps above. Let's talk about them:

Contact Pose: This is the moment you rest your feet or toe on the ground. Usually the walks start with this pose.

Extreme Down: Here is the moment that you support your contact leg, feel the weight and picks up momentum for the next step.

Passing Position: You will have a straight leg, and the other ready to change the position.

Extreme High: It's the high point of the walk where the body begins to fall towards the other leg to make contact.

Repeat the process with the other leg and you will have a Walk Cycle.

"Walk what?"

Cycle is when you repeat something at the last frame is linked to the first, and then it become a loop. This allows an animator save time. You will have something like this:

In the case of this assignment, we have 5 key poses. 4 different, with the first and last equal, with different feet.

Something to note is how the hip works. Let's look from the image below:

As you can see, the hip will make a movement similar to a wave. It will also rotate, and the highest values are in the extreme poses.

"And this 0.5s?"

It is related to the time of half cycle. A full-cycle is only complete when the last frame is the same to the first pose. A basic walk defaults to 24 frames.
This week the walk is only a blocking, showing the key poses in stepped mode. Inbetweens is just next week.

In addition to the walk, this week return to do poses. This time we did a pose that demonstrate physical strength. I had trouble in some aspects. I'll show you why.

"This is awesome! Where's the problem?"

Well, in this assignment I realized the difference between doing force, be strong, and win something easy. More than ever you must reflect the weight in the pose. And here Stu is doing strength.. But he is the weak! Jose warned me saying that Tailor looks the strongest here. It feels like Stu is struggling to pull Tailor. For Stu to feel powerful he basically needs to be standing there calmly while Tailor tries to drag him away unsuccessfully.

So I took a deep breath and tried something different:

Well... No success again. If you remember the film, Thor cannot remove the Mjölnir.We concluded that the use of strength is there, but the main character is weak.

Therefore, my assignment of week 8 was like this: