Week 4: Jumps! Digging into Secondary Action

Cycle of the week:  Jumps!

Click to view the incredible video of a fox hunting through snow

We'll take a look at some different styles of jumping, leaping, hopping, bounding characters and study live action for inspiration, and analyze the way secondary and overlapping action works.

Showing the effort characters take to move their own weight is paramount to creating believable animation of any style.

It's one thing to make the up and down motion read as 'heavy' and affected by gravity. It's quite another to master the mechanics of looping overlapping/secondary action with the character's arms, legs, and .. tail!

If ever the devil were in any details.. it's animating secondary on a looping action!

Homework for next week:

• Animate a jump cycle that should be usable for avoiding ground pitfalls or traveling forward.
• The mechanics of the body in the jump should work well before tackling the secondary action
• The secondary needs to loop smoothly, so you'll need to use view cycle --> Infinity quite a bit here.
• This cycle should work from every angle, especially Side view.

Bonus Homework:

• Bring me a shrubbery!
• Find some video of great 'crouches' from video games you play.  We can study these as examples and try our own versions.