Performance and Character - Weeks 5 & 6

Limping Walk Cycle

After reaching a comfortable stage of my 'wall climb and throw', I decided that I would next move onto the three separate walk cycle tasks. I have memorized from past experiences each key pose and the typical timing between them within a walk cycle, and even explored how to adapt that into a run cycle, however I never delved into how the character's mood, motive and circumstance would effect how their walk would play out. I have decided to begin with animating 'a person walking with a bad limp'. Due to the lack of detail given with this task unlike the previous one, I see a lot more freedom in terms of how to communicate my intention, as we are not told how severe the limp is, the mood of the character or their motives. 

Character Bio

Regardless of the simplicity of this short animation, I still felt it necessary to flesh out the character, as I feel that quirks could still have the potential to show through this simple animation, thus creating more of narrative behind the piece. I did feel a little less inspired to create a story this time however, as I don't feel as though the situation that I create could be interpreted into anything resembling it's intended meaning, so this character bio if for my benefit more than anyone else's. One of the main things that I wanted to ensure when creating this character though, is that the limp that is portrayed in the animation isn't something the character would have lived with for a while, as I feel experiencing something such as a mobility impediment for a long time would effect how you worked around it more effectively, therefore not being as interesting to animate.

Name : Rudy Williams

Gender: Male

Age: 32

Ethnicity: Caucasian, grew up and still lives in Cardiff, Wales.

Family: Has a happily married mother and father who, much to his discomfort, still treat Rudy as if he was 11.

Intelligence: Cleverest person in his relatively large circle of friends, often being looked up to for advice.

Education: Despite his intelligence, he never took up further education due to things moving quickly with his girlfriend.

Occupation: On the dole, devotes most of his time to chilling with his friends and caring for his girlfriend, Liv.

Religion: Introduced to Christianity by Liv, which he claims to follow despite his doubts.

Sexual orientation: Straight, engaged to get married to Liv.

Goals, ambitions, dreams and secrets: He wants to settle down and start a family with Liv whilst still keeping the party-animal inside of him alive and not become boring, which is what he felt like happened to his Dad.

Fears/phobias: Ending up like his parents, becoming dependent on his parents, loosing the trust of his friends.

Favourate kind of music: 90's music.

Sense of humour: Often takes his jokes too far and causes unintended discomfort, but for himself he mostly sees the humorous side of any bad situation.

Adrenaline moments: Gathering the whole gang together and having a 24 hour long party.

Physical description: Tall, nimble, fairly weak.

Physical disabilites: His tenancy to get too drunk often results in him suffering with minor, temporary inconveniences for a couple of days after the incidents, whether it be headaches, limps or aches.

The situation - It is the day of Rudy and Liv's wedding, and despite knowing how much he wishes to devote the rest of his life to spending with Liv, Rudy can't help but picture himself becoming his Dad, causing him to drink excessively hours before the big moment, which he begins to regret more and more as he gets drunker and drunker. When the time came for him to say the words 'I do', Rudy looked to the crowd to see his mother and his father, who's lack of charisma that was once true in themselves becoming extremely evident to Rudy, causing him to tear up, unable to look the love of his life in the eyes. Sensing Liv's anger and upset, Rudy shoved passed the priest, proceeding to violently kick the stand behind him, fighting off those who came up to attempt to calm him down. After the outburst comes to an emotional and abrupt stop, Rudy, whilst muttering "I'm so sorry" under his breath, stormed out of the church in a different to a heartbroken Liv, leaving a baffled crowd of loved ones behind them. Rudy continued to wonder off to where-ever his damaged state took him, alone. He was limping due to injuries sustained in his outburst, and was also still intoxicated and only just slowing down to comprehend what he has just done. This is the walk that I wish to capture.

Unfortunately, I don't feel as though I will incorporate enough elements into my short performance that would communicate the character that I am attempting to show. It may still make perfect sense in the context of the situation, though I predict it will in no way show it out of context, this is because of the length of the footage that I require. From this, I can conclude that a bio of this length isn't necessary for this animation, and in later tasks, I will only provide a bio such as this if I feel like it would make an impact on the animation itself.

Before filming my own reference material for my walk, I felt as though it would be beneficial to gather some secondary resource source material, in order to gain a better understanding of how to communicate the type of limp that I wish to capture.

At the 5:00 mark of this video, the actor demonstrates a 'leg asleep' walk.

I found this video very useful, as not only does provide a side and front view for better reference, but it is also more of a naturalistic response to the idea, as most of the sources I found were overwhelmingly cartoonish or theatrical.

An animation which contains strong silhouettes, breaking down a limping cycle frame by frame.

This source concentrates on the curves provided by the body posture at different stages of the walk.

A source which indicates all of the key frames in a typical walk cycle animation, and shows how they are adapted to show a limp.

A much more exaggerated, theatrical response.

With all of this knowledge of how to emulate a limp, I felt it an appropriate time to record my own primary footage, whilst keeping in mind the character that I have established, his emotions and particular circumstance. I thought that instead of pretending to have a limp, it would make for a more genuine display if I put a stone in my shoe, therefore making my performance more accurate. I walked up and down my room several times, and took the best take, as it took me a while to work out how to walk in this situation.

When recording this material, I took into account the complaints I had with my previous reference material for my previous task, which is why I stood my camera on a tripod in order to gain a better sense of distance progression and a clearer image. I found the fact that I performed this in the privacy of my own home also helped me to be more confident, and get into the mind of the character a lot more effectively.

From all these sources, I have noted down 7 things to keep in mind when trying to emulate this movement for myself, which are as follows;
1. The injured foot travels a lot less in terms of distance in each step then the alternate foot.
2. The body attempts to keep the majority of pressure on the non-injured leg/foot, which is shown mainly through the hips.
3. The character pushes off from the injured foot, producing a relatively large leap for the non-injured foot, thus shortening the amount of time that balance is shifted towards the injured foot.
4. Arms typically point outwards and wave around more, as they are being used to help the keep balance for the slanted posture.
5. The injured foot drops slowly, meaning that each step differentiates in length of time.
6. Body arches upwards when pressure is put on the injured foot.
7. The body travels at a lot less of a constant speed.

As is the case with all my animation exercises, it was time to gather a better understanding of the timings for all the actions, by analysing the video frame by frame and creating notes. As I was focusing on a walk cycle, I already had a clear idea of what positions I was looking out for, so all I had to do is write down at what frame they appear.

Although I said in a previous blog post that I would like to explore alternative forms of animation, I felt I was really getting into Maya during my previous animation, therefore want to further the skills I have started to develop, and I feel the other forms of animation I mentioned would be best suited to some of the other tasks that we have been set.

Above is my limping animation, I feel as though I have managed to capture what I intended to, and I have no doubt it would be read by others to be a limping walk cycle. As always though, I will keep and open mind and come back to this animation to make any adjustments if anyone points them out to me. The timings and poses were drastically altered from the notes I made, this was due to me wanting to give the piece more passion and drama by (among other alterations) adding the animation principals known as 'anticipation' and 'exaggeration', to make the struggled leap from his right foot seem more evident. Due to the fact that this is a walk cycle, after fully animating two full steps, I could repeat the frames, making traveling straight along the X axis the only movement that is progressive, therefore not reverting to the location it started, which meant that I was able to produce this animation a lot quicker than my previous animation. 

The graph editor for the entire animation, notice how only the blue lines of certain elements are the ones that are gradually progressing in terms of height, as they are the only movements which don't revert back to their starting location relative to the rest of the body

Again, I am  happy with what I have accomplished and feel as though my skills in Maya and my understanding character animation in general are getting stronger, however there are still some aspects of my animation process which I hope to improve/change in future animations;

- Create a simpler narrative behind the next piece, whilst keeping a deeply thought out character, therefore still showing personality, but having a less complicated story to communicate to the viewers.

- Diverse the characters shown in my pieces, get a new actor if need be.

- Produce some 2D animations for these tasks.
- Depending on the complexity of the narrative that I am trying to convey, simplify the bio, only including relevant information to the action/s that I am capturing.

https://vimeo.com/241341607