Run & Jump - Maya

For this animation, I gathered as much primary and secondary research as possible, as I am unfamiliar with animating running and jumping. As images which present illustrations of key poses of a walk assisted me well with my walking animations, I collected the same with the run. 

Secondary Source

From this material, I have gathered some noteworthy elements of this cycle that I will have to keep in mind when animating the run;

- The 'up' and 'down' poses appear to be a lot less extreme as they are in the walk, as the head stays relatively level compared to the walk

- Both feet are never seen on the ground within the same frame

- Body is more forward facing than it is on the walk

- Arm swings are more noticeable

Secondary Source

This is some secondary material which I found for the jump aspect for the animation. However, there are several reasons as to why I feel this material would not be suitable for this animation, one of which is that is very cartoony, therefore may look out of place if the run isn't animated in the same style. This will still help me in ensuring that I include a variation of each pose however. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any drawn and decent material which chains a run and a jump together, and although I found plenty of illustrations regarding the key poses of a jump, they mostly started with both feet on the ground, therefore it would be complicated to chain these two movements together, so this is where I had to refer to video reference material.

Here is a video which I captured myself, I found it interesting how different this jump looks as appose to the drawn jump I shown earlier, so I decided to gather some more secondary reference material from YouTube.

Along with this secondary and my primary research, I produced a bar sheet.

Bar Sheet scan

This was my first attempt at this exercise in Maya, and although I found the run fairly simple to accurately portray, the jump I found to be very difficult to make, which was most likely due to the lack of drawn secondary material to use as reference, the arms were especially problematic, as they often appeared as though they stayed perfectly still in the air whilst the body moved on. Though on the whole I was satisfied that I make Buckid perform a moderately accurate a run and jump, being especially pleased with the foot movements and utilisation of the anticipation and follow-through animation principals, there were still several things that I think needed a touch up in a updated version, these being;

-  For the run leading up to the jump, the jump seems relatively weak, as Buckid should travel further and higher, though I was hesitant to do so as I didn't want the action coming off as overly cartoony

- As I used the same number of keyframes separating each key pose as I did in the walk cycle, the run looks very 'floaty' and slow

- As I have previously mentioned, the arm movements seem unnatural

For these reasons I have decided to remake this animation.

https://vimeo.com/217222101

This is the updated version, and I am happy that I have successfully fixed all the complaints that I had with my previous version, and also added a few more subtle quirks and additions. The speed of the run was very easy to amend, as all I have to do was shorten the amount of frames between each key pose. The height and length of the jump however, was very difficult to fix, as each keyframe for the feet after Buckid's initial contact with the ground had to be altered as they each had to be positioned further than they were initially. I also experimented with some 'squash and stretch', which can be seen on Buckids head before and after he sets off for the jump, and his expression towards the end, which adds a very subtle yet expressive sense of character. Overall, I am very happy with this outcome, and had the most fun making it out of all my past Maya exercises due to its dynamic nature.