Animation, round 2!

After a couple of months of neglect, I’ve begun to practice animation again. Well, not by choice but rather because of my university course. Our current module is all about animation and moving images. Walk-cycles, Character rigging, all the good stuff.

Whilst we did have to use photoshop in some tasks which I didn’t enjoy (Just because it has a barely functioning timeline feature, it doesn’t mean it’s an animation program!), I’ve been having a blast the rest of the time.

As I mentioned in a previous blog post way back, I jumped the shark and attempted to animate a full animated sequence. It did not go well. I got frustrated and overwhelmed and was ready to discard animation entirely. Afterwards I decided to do some basic exercises to slowly ease myself into animation, such as hair blowing in the wind. Now that I think about it, that was pretty complicated too! That’s likely why I stopped doing these exercises as well.

Luckily, this module has provided me with the time-sensitivity I needed to keep up with this goal! I can now do a half decent walk cycle. We are appreciating the end of this project in class, so I definitely plan to continue animating.

In addition, I found the book The Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams a great resource. I used it whenever I was stuck on which drawing went on which frame. Aside from some…questionable opinions on how women and gay men walk, this book is the bee’s knees and I truly recommend it! I have a physical copy but it’s quite a heavy book and probably expensive. So, you may want to look for an alternative way of acquiring it *wink wink*

Here are some walk-cycles I did:

I also made this little number when I had extra time.

Until next time, 

Beki