Taking Brendan’s advice I changed over the weapon to be a sword (which I luckily had already built and rigged to the character before animating) and thankfully the bulk of the action still works with the weapon. I made he tweaks that he suggested. Offset the hand and body moving back in anticipation, offset the feet shifting the weight at the beginning, and dropped his head after the large swing and then brought it up to start leading the body back. Lastly, I changed up the entire ending. I fixed his little hop back and I feel it looks a lot more natural and also added a small flourish type of move as he gets back into position.
What I really wanted to focus on this go around after Brendan’s comments was thinking about how each body part is effecting the other. But I probably did it in reverse. Such as, “I need to get my arms to this position, how does my torso have to move to cause that motion? My hips? And then how does that effect my knees? My ankles?” And so on and so on. I think that helped a lot. But we’ll see :)
I’m interested in your thoughts, negative and positive alike!
I contacted Brendan Body a few days ago and asked if he’s be kind enough to critique my Axe Attack animation. Well this morning I got his e-mail. Man, what an awesome critique. He really dove into the piece and gave awesome constructive feedback and really in depth. What is also nice, is that he posted it on his blog so you can read it here.
To let you know who Brendan is, a little excerpt from his website.
I’m a Scottish animator who’s been working in the industry since 2000. I’ve been lucky enough to work on some high-profile projects, such as the Harry Potter films and the Oscar winning Happy Feet. -Brendan Body
Thanks again Brendan, and I hope everyone can get some good insight from his post.
Part of me feels it’s still a bit slow, but I’ve been told I make things too fast so I’m going to keep it where it is at until I get some more feedback.
Started my clean up on the Mammoth and working out the spline action. Its a little uneven in some parts and I’m trying to work those out. Quadrupeds are difficult when you’re used to just one set of legs have a solid start and end point. Throw in another set of legs that are off set and it gets real weird. So far I’m happy with the state that its at. I have some work to do on the tail, ears, and more with the trunk.
I have many of them. Here is a sample of image of a character animation I’ll be working on once the Mammoth is complete. This image speaks to my super-geeky-fantasy side.
Hey everyone! Started my first quadrupedal walk cycle. In college when this assignment came up I animated a Kangaroo, so I didn’t get a chance to really work out a ‘true’ quadruped walk so I wanted to give it another go. I found this great Mammoth rig by Sudeesh Chathanoor on Highend3d.com and I wanted to use it in something, so I thought this would be a great opportunity to do so.
I decided to move away from Blogspot as it did not offer the solutions I needed to display the large format Quick Time movies that I like to view my Play Blasts in. Quick Time is great because it gives me the chance to watch the animation frame by frame.
As a small repost, here is the Axe Attack animation with clean up.
