Performance and Character - Week 7

Rejected Lover Walk

Due to the help that I received previously with my 'wall climb' animation after showcasing what I thought was the final piece to my peers, I thought it would be a good idea to do so with my 'Limp' animation, and as it is a much shorter and simpler animation, I could easily act on and change the issues raised providing they're not too major.

There were three main issues that were brought up whilst showcasing my work that I think I have managed to solve in my latest version, these were as follows -
1. Someone commented that it looks as though that instead of walking with a limp, the character instead seems to be attempting to walk with a prosthetic leg, due to the fact that the character doesn't appear to be trying to hard to avoid putting pressure on the injured leg.
2. Both arms seemed to abruptly change direction whilst completely altering the momentum, meaning the motion isn't smooth and looses all flow.
3. The injured foot seemed to slide across the floor too much.

These problems were resolved in the following ways -
1. I sped up the timing briefly after the injured foot makes contact with the ground, and minimised as much bend in the knee of the injured leg as possible.
2. I deleted unnecessary key-frames and added more easing.
3. I checked the translation of the foot across the Z and X axis and made sure that the numbers stayed the same whilst on the ground.

Below is the updated, final version.

Once all the adjustments were made, I then proceeded to make a start on the 'rejected lover walk'. I chose this as appose to the 'thoughtful lover walk', due to the fact that I would be animating a walk in a cheerful mood in the next animation task (joyful child), therefore to show better contrast, it would help for me to produce a walk which would work with an alternate mood.

As with all these exercises, I at first proceeded to create the bio. This time however, I learnt from my previous mistakes and didn't include information that I felt would be unnecessary and therefore won't affect the outcome of my animation.

Aspects about the character that will affect performance :

- The character is male, therefore I will ensure that the foot placements resemble a typical males pattern, as male tend to take larger footsteps with each placement having more space between them horizontally. I chose to have a male character to help from a narrative side of view, as it is more often typically portrayed in media for the male to be the rejected one in a relationship, therefore adding familiarity to the piece.

Segment from the book 'Animators Survival Kit' in which foot placements are examined

- The character will be in a extremely depressed and upset mood, having being just rejected by his crush, this will mean that I will have to put in a lot of research as to how people typically manoeuvre whilst experiencing this feeling. The research is locate bellow.
- The age of the character will be 17, as I feel as though at this age, a rejection from a lover would cause a lot more of an upset, therefore allowing me to show a much more extreme reaction for the character, making for a lot more of an expressive and interesting walk cycle. The fact that my character is 17 will also affect the mobility, as he is young he would likely move quicker with more flexibility in his joints, though these characteristics will be affected by other details about the character. I will show his age by making his arms and legs move smoothly in the joints as appose to a more stiff movement.
- The character will be 6f"3, I chose this height as I feel that a taller than average height would help to empathise his arched posture and 'slugglish' movements, therefore making it more clear how he is feeling.

The Situation :
My character is walking back after meeting up with his soon to be ex-girlfriend by her request. During their meetup, she explained that it wasn't working out, due to his lack of communication and the fact that college work is his priority. My character expected this to be the case before setting off, but kept as optimistic as possible, whist making sure to present himself in the best way possible to improve his chances of securing their relationship. When told the news, my character sluggishly drags himself back home, having deep regret for what he has done.

The story I kept as simple as possible, whilst still giving myself enough depth to get in the mind of the character, assuming how he would react in this situation, thus allowing me to create more of a grounded and clear character performance.

As I previously mentioned, in order to portray the emotion of sadness in my animation, a lot of research would be needed to emulate it accurately. Below is the secondary researched that I collected for this purpose.

An animated gif, showing a very exaggerated, cartoon walk cycle. Notice how the feet scrape across the ground and lift is minimal.

A much more naturalistic response, yet still portraying the emotion clearly. Notice how in this instance, the subject has a very closed posture, whereas the others are more open, this would likely to be because of the subject's shyness.

A breakdown of how a depressed walk differs from a generic walk cycle in terms of timing and position. Notice how the 'down' pose is stretched out in terms of timing.

The 'shuffle' segment in the image above closely resembles a sad walk cycle.

From all of this secondary resource material, I can conclude the following should apply to my following walk cycle animation:

• Back should be arched, the extent of which will be determined by the whether not I will aim for a naturalistic animation or not
• Foot lift should be minimal, with the feet scraping across the ground
• Arm movement should be minimal, however any movement should be coming primarily from the elbow, not shoulders
• Head bobs up and down with the body
• Down poses should be exaggerated and take more time to complete
• The character should take shorter strides

The next step was to record myself performing my primary reference material. I kept what I have established as a character in mind, but I understand that many different people would show sadness in many alternative ways, so I knew that my vast array of secondary research would assist the way in which I interpret this footage, thus allowing the emotion to be as easily communicated as many others as possible. I felt that the timings in my primary material were solid enough to be translated in the final animation, however.

This time, instead of simply noting down at what frame each pose in the walk cycle occurred and then converting that into a bar sheet, I produced a simple illustration for each how I envisioned the character to look at each signature pose, along with any notes that I felt were essential to keep in mind when animating. I found this a lot more helpful than I found working from a bar sheet, as it was laid out in a way that I found more comfortable to read from. As the animation is a cycle, a segment of frames will be looped, therefore meaning that I don't find it necessary to list out every repeated frame, allowing me more space to focus on how the walk should look. This method also helped me gain more of an idea about how my character would look, thus creating even more of an identity for him.

Rejected Lover animation sheet

I understand that in the industry, I will be required to work via guidelines that are set by the company, therefore meaning that I wouldn't necessarily be aloud to personalise the making of material to this extent. I assume this is so that if another animator were to pick up my pre-production material, they would be able to understand it and animate from it with ease. For the purposes of this animation however, I will stick to this method. Below is the final product.

What went well -

• This piece was focused on how an emotional state would affect a walk cycle, as appose to the previous exercise where we focused on how a physical impairment would affect the same. This meant that if my rig had facial controls, it would be somewhat of a cheat, as that can easily be adjusted to portray the emotion. However, I wanted to see if I could portray the emotion solely through the movement, and I feel as though I have done so successfully.
• The way in which the feet scrape and then quickly flop back onto the ground really adds an element of cartoon charm to the piece, as well as further insinuating the fed up nature of the character.
• Unlike the previous animation, This took a lot less time to produce, as each foot moves the same as the other, meaning that I only had to work on fleshing out one step, then repeating that step in a mirrored manor.
• Certain animation principals were utilised to emphasise the mood of the character, such as 'follow through', as seen when the head continues to drop for a few frames after the body starts to raise back up, and 'arc', as seen through the arched trajectory of the limb and joint movements, thus preventing the movements to appear stiff and mechanical.
• I feel as though every aspect of the character that I knew would affect the way in which he moves, has been successfully applied.

What have gone better -

• The way in which the feet move sometimes makes it seem as though the character is either trenching through mud or wearing very heavy shoes. This was because of how much 'exaggeration' I included, in order to create more of a 'cartoon' styled response.
• I feel as though the arms sometimes move suddenly and quickly, out of sync with the rest of the body flow, this was because the hands kept phasing through the legs, due to the rig's oddly shaped legs, so I had to adjust them slightly to prevent this from happening, unfortunately causing the flow of the animation to be off.
• After showing other people my animation, there were a few instances in which people assumed that the character was just tired, as appose to depressed. After studying my animation again, I realise that this is likely due to the head movement, as it is facing down too much, when in reality, it should stay more upright whilst sinking down into the shoulders, however there isn't a control which allowed me to do as such in this rig.

What I will change next time -

• Make sure the rig that I am using has all the controls necessary for the task in hand.
• Check with more people before finalising my piece, in order to see whether or not they interpret it as intended.
• I will ensure that all of the curves are correct on the graph editor, thus ensuring flow remains constant throughout.