Creating More Models in 2D

Over the past week I found myself creating more 2D sketches of my characters in different poses, which not only helped me improve my drawing skills for my first character, but also helped me draw them with expressions in motion.

With my first character, Domino, I realized that how I drew him was weaker compared to the other 3 characters I developed, especially him in motion. I made him a priority this time and focused on how his body moves and acts, as well as updating the shape of his paws. I made them less glove like and more of individual fingers.

The frog character went mostly unchanged and I tried to keep with his specific feel. I was using the older pictures I did of the character as reference. Same goes for the ball-like character I created, even if he's the simplest of everyone with just eyes and a body.

The snake character though I think helped greatly now that I can create his wing hands easily and I can understand his body structure. His expressions show a lot, and I feel like he's coming along more as a character. Given the four of them, I have high hopes for them in the future, especially with Domino so I can made his walk cycle for the final.

Making a Walk Cycle

Taking one of the older models into Maya, specifically the basic model, I decided to take a shot at creating a walk cycle with a rigged character, and was as difficult as expected.

There were lots of different parts of the rig that I had to keyframe every time I moved it, but the best thing is that I didn't mess up and ruin the flow of what I was key framing by forgetting a moment to keyframe. I started with the legs and feet, which went pretty well as I moved the parts around.

Afterwards I moved the arms and torso, and finally the head to finish the animation. I feel that overall the head was the hardest thing to do because I never really notice how my head moves when I walk and how much it bobs up and down. Same with the back and the hips, since on my own I can't really feel anything moving.

Just Walk It Out

The last class we spent together was all about walking animations and characters walking. I was really surprised how difficult this was to do, since out loud it sounds really easy. I never really thought about the specifics of a walk cycle before.

I walked around in different ways to see how it felt, paying attention to how my arms and shoulders and other parts moved when I walked. It was really strange, because I never payed attention to it before.

For my animal character though, I payed more attention to how his tail and ears react when I walks. The tail itself is less floppy compared to a squirrels, casually moving itself back and forth as he walks. And his ears I figured out would behave much like long hair, moving depending on the speed he was going but probably bouncing lightly as he moved.