Walk Through Space - Stop Motion

https://vimeo.com/214024414

This is my first attempt at a full walk cycle in the stop motion room, and in many ways it has been a success, but there are a lot of things that need adapting and changing, so I will revisit this animation in the future to perfect it. Unlike my other animations in this module, I didn't use my own primary resource for reference aside from my bar sheet, this was because I first want to master a simple, regular walk cycle before I can start adding my own personality and tweaks to the animation, and there is an abundance of secondary sources on the internet regarding the walk cycle, and one in particular which I based my animation on - 

Secondary source material

My Bar Sheet Scan

I found the secondary source material very helpful as it listed the 5 key poses in a step, and shows the amount of keyframes in between each of them. The only thing missing from these diagrams is the movement of the arms, so I had to improvise how they moved using my excising knowledge from the Maya animations. Each key pose within this diagram suggests that there is two keyframes in between each pose, meaning that they are on thirds, my final animation sticks to this rule completely, and I found it relatively easy to space out each pose for the armature. The things which I am please with in this animation include;

- The up/down movement of the head is clearly incorporated and accurate according to my source material

- Legs pass and bend accurately

- It is timed so that every two steps is equal to a second of animation

However, as I previously mentioned, there are also some aspects of the animation that I was not happy with, which include;

- The starting and ending pose was a 'contact' pose, meaning that I didn't get to animate how the armature would start and stop the walk. This was because I wanted to purely focus on the cycle, but I feel as though on my next attempt of a similar animation, I will definitely do research into the start and finish of a walk prior to the animation and attempt to incorporate it into it into future animations.

- Due to the lack of arm specifications on the diagram, I feel as though the arms are somewhat over-exaggerated and don't move realistically. So I will make sure my source material has this information next time.

- Each step is varying in length, and makes some steps look overly cartoonish than they should be, and due to the pacing between each step being the same, the speed seems inconsistent. If were to ever to incorporate a walk cycle in the future, I will bring a ruler so that I can ensure each step will cover the same distance.

- The body appears to be too far in front of the legs, which would be more suitable for a running animation

I am glad that I made this animation now, as I feel a lot more confident for using a walk cycle in future animations. After reevaluating this walk cycle, I decided to go back and re-shoot this animation, keeping in mind all the things that I have learnt from it. I attempted to shoot in twos, meaning that each frame is shot twice, meaning it will be played in half the frame rate, thus making me have to cut down the amount of inbetween frames from each key frame in order to prevent the animation from seeming too slow. I wanted to see how this would effect the animations smoothness and appeal.

As you can see there are a few minor improvements that I have made, such as presenting the armature come to a gradual stop, appose to it just freezing as was the case with the original, and getting better control of the arm movements. Despite these very minor improvements, I feel that the original should go as my final submission, as due to the frame rate, the video doesn't seem to flow very well.