I showed this one around a bit and one comment rang out about the character needing more up and down. Now, I was following the Richard Williams method of runs in that they generally do not have as much up and down as a walk. I applied that principle to this run, but something funny happened, it lost the weight. It drove home the point that there are just guidelines, not rules to animation. There may not be much up and down in a standard run, but with this very cartoony character it needed that large up and down to sell the weight presented in the rest of the body.
Well, I must say adding that larger disparity in the Y-Axis really accomplished that feeling I was going for. Thanks go out to Eric Cerda and Brendan Body for their keen eye for motion.
He should definitely trip and break his glasses somewhere in there.
Comment by andrewq — 10/27/2009 @ 5:37 pm
Yeah, that feels better to me. Nice work.
Interesting point about how much vertical motion to apply. I think the speed of the run is a major factor, as this is a reasonably slow run the up and down on the body is going to be more than in a walk. If it was a really fast run (say 10 frames) there wouldn’t be as much time for the hips to drop as far and therefore it would be less.
Comment by Brendan Body — 10/28/2009 @ 6:49 pm