Animal Walk Cycle

Animal Walk Cycle - Black Bear

 

 

 

For this assignment, we were to create a walk cycle for a four-legged creature, skeleton up. I came out with the black bear. I'm told it looks a bit like he's trudging through mud, and that may be because in my reference videos the bears were walking through tall grass (which made foot placements tricky too). Overall I think it functions well.

The 'Winnie the Pooh' gag at the beginning was meant as a joke for my classmates. Knowing it would be shown in a presention of everyone's assignments, I wanted to fake people out into thinking I'd done a very stupid, poorly done cycle. After that I just decided to do a fun, super loose morph into the actual black bear cycle.

Master Copy Painting

Master Copy Painting - Tarzan

 

This assignment was to try to copy a master background painting used in a short or film. I chose one from Tarzan, and I think it turned out pretty close. Biggest problem is that the ropes are a bit too thick and bold, but that was difficult to rectify after they were already put down. Overall I was happy with it.

Bird Walk

Multi-plane Bird Walk Cycle

 

 

Here's the bird walk cycle again, this time digitally coloured and placed into a multi-plane pan. One of the first digitally coloured animations I did, traced over the pencil test in ToonBoom Harmony. Bonus walk after the jump.

Walk Cycle

Walk Cycle - Bird

 

 

This was our first walk cycle using an original character. To keep things familiar, it had to keep similar dimensions to that of the Pink Panther, and so I came up with this bird design. It took a few tries to get a natural lunging motion and the proper bobs in the head and tail, but I think it turned out nicely. The extra animation at the end, specifically when the bird un-pretzels himself, definitely took the most effort.

Walk Cycle

Walk Cycle - Pink Panther

 

 

My first walk cycle. To ease us into it, the keyframes for the Pink Panther were provided and we worked on the in-betweens. The horizon line was required. It makes the entire upper body look stiff as a board, but those were the frames we were given. In retrospect, maybe having it intersect the body at leg-level would have helped to avoid the problem.

Toronto Zoo

Toronto Zoo - Animal Life Drawing

Our other animal life drawing trip was to the Toronto Zoo, and though I'm still no expert at life drawing, I think I improved by this point. Full collection of gestures and studies after the break.

Shere Khan

Established Character - Head Turn & Lip Sync

 

 

 

For this assignment we had to choose an established character, then animate that character's head doing a 360 rotation into a lip sync of the word 'Meow,' and ending with an expression change. The audio file was provided, and it was our first animation with lip sync (or any sound, for that matter).

 

Shere Khan was a difficult little bugger to get right, because you very rarely see him from behind in the Jungle Book. Also, his model changes as the viewing angle changes. So I had to piece together from certain points in the movie what worked as a single model that I could animate from all angles, then stick to that.