Animation Critique - Walkcycle (Joey)

Direct Link: Joey's Walk SIDE and FRONT

HAHAHAHAHA!

Awesome cycle, love it! Now that's what I'm talking about. He's a cocky football player, not a grey standard walking rig. Nice job!

The overall attitude comes across very well. The helmet wobble is great, nice detail.

A few tiny things. Side view, his left hand, as it goes down til frame 7, it looks like it goes down til 7, then stays at the same height for frame 8, then goes down again at frame 9. It's a small detail, but if you smooth out that spacing, then it will get rid of that tiny pop. Right now it looks like the arms starts going down then suddenly accelerates. I think that those frames I mentioned are the culprit.

The hips (front view), they seem a bit wobbly. You can a direction change in it, which could work, but it needs some love. Let's say frame 7, his left leg is up, all the weight is on the right leg. So the screen left side of the hip should be higher than the right side. You have it at frame 4 already, but that is a bit early. By frame 9 the hip goes up with the passing leg. Realistically, it should be the opposite, because now the weight really is on his right leg (screen left). By frame 11 the right side of the hip is really high up. Again, it should be the opposite. When he takes the step on frame 16, your right side of the hip is going up already, that's too soon. The weight is not on that leg yet, the foot is just starting to plant. By frame 18 the hip is up. I would delay that and have the hip down and then start the same movement up at frame 18 til 20 or 21. Your body is dipping very quickly at frame 18. During frames 16 to 19 the body (looking at the hips) stops going down, then at 20 starts the quick dip down and the up. That movement gives the character a nice bouncy feel to it. But since it's dipping that fast, he's preparing to push himself up, so he's really putting all the weight on that leg, so revisit your weight shifts on the hip.

Feet (front view). From frame 1 to frame 2, the screen right foot slides towards the right, then his heel does a sharp screen left movement from frame 3 to 4. The screen left foot is better, that pop is not in there. Except from frame 18 to 19, look at his toes (screen left foot), the move to the left quite a bit, but then on 20 no movement to the left anymore. Take frame 19 and move the foot screen right to fix the spacing.

Overall body movement (front view): Look at frame 16. He's leaning towards screen right. So he would have to move in that direction and balance himself out. But from frame 16 to 19 (looking at the hips as reference), he stops moving towards the right, then on 20 continues again. Keep the movement going towards the right, don't stop it, and maybe have him move screen right a bit more. Looking at frame 16 he looks off balance, and since he's moving from left to right with that lean, you'd expect him to move a bit further screen right in order to balance himself out.

That should be it for now. Great job, looking already really good.

When you want to make your cycle last longer and tweak things inbetween, then select your character controllers (or the bouncing ball or whatever has animation on it), in the graph editor, select "Curves", then "Post Infinity", then "Cycle". Still in the Graph Editor select "View", then "Infinity" and youll see lighter dotted version of your curves that extend beyond your selected timeline (1 to 30). If you select Curves>Pre Infinity, then you'll see the curves go into the minus timeline to the left. If you want to extend your cycle, then you need to bake out your keys. Select your controllers (or ball or whatever has animation on it), then Curves>Bake Channel. This will "bake" out the curves for the timeline that you have set. So if your cycle is 30 frames long, and you want to make your whole animation 240 frames long, then adjust your timeline, then bake out the curves and you will see that it will bake them out from 1 to 240.

As to what funny things you could add, that's up to you. Why not have a football being thrown at him. Either hard so it hits his head, throws him off balance then he has to regain his composure, and he will act like nothing happened while he does so, or someone throws the ball in a more casual way, he catches it and throws it back? Let's talk about it tomorrow and we can act some stuff out.

Cheers
Jean-Denis