WEEK 9: Motion Studies - Game Cycles -- #1 Treadmill Walks!

You're going to get lots of practice setting up game cycles: walks, runs, jumps, and finally, blending them seamlessly together.

First cycle on the agenda: Walks. It's time for a whole new level of picky: treadmills.  You are about to become very involved with your Graph Editor. If that scares you, it's time to learn to love this indispensable tool.

When animating complex motions like walks it's a very good idea to study live action reference, or even create your own.

Walk Reference:
Treadmill Walk: Dude
"Endless Reference"'s You Tube channel (also see sidebar link -->)
Monster's Inc
Iron Giant

Getting good at cycles requires patience and practice. You should try a few different ones so you get faster at setting them up. It's always better work from reference. Shooting your own reference can be invaluable so you understand the mechanics.

Your final cycles are all due near the end of term but we'll have lots of in-class time to work on them.

We're using a new rig for this term, a more complex, TV-quality rig called "Eleven" made for the Eleven Second Club. Click to download the latest v1.2.
http://elevenrig.blogspot.ca/

Remember to open Maya, REFERENCE in your rig file, and then save your new scene.

Assignment 4: Animation Cycles - walk, run, jump sequence
Assigned: November 2nd
Due: December 14th in class
% of Final Grade: 40%
The sequence must contain loopable cycles blended together into one scene. Include a few loops of each cycle and add any necessary blending between each cycle. Animation should show all 12 principles of animation, especially strong posing, weight, and overlapping action. The character should have believable weight, a clear personality, and move with fluidity and clarity. The cycles should blend together cleanly with all necessary weight shifts, anticipations and reactions added to the final file. Animation work-in-progress will be critiqued in class. The final blended animation sequence will be graded as one project.

Please submit all work to our shared DropBox folder using the following naming conventions and settings:

Filenames:
tdonovan_anim_001.ma
tdonovan_anim_001.mov

File Format: QT
Encoding: H.264
Quality: 100
Image Size: Custom
Width: 560
Height: 316

Click here to download a bookmark-sized "12 Principles Desktop Cheat Sheet"

Good luck!