Performance and Character - Week 8

Child Full of Joy Walk

After feeling confident that I produced the previous task to the best of my ability, I decided to make a start on the 'Child Full of Joy' walk. I found the way in which I produced my animation in the previous task to be effective, therefore I decided to use a similar practice to make this one.

Unlike the other walk cycles, I do not only have to study how the emotion affects their cycle, but also their age and therefore their proportions. It was for this reason that I at first decided to look into working with an alternative rig, one that more closely resembled the proportions of a child.

Secondary resource illustration showing how proportions change with age 

After measuring up the Keith rig against this graph, I noticed that he is roughly 7 heads tall, meaning that he is most similar to a 10 year old. As I feel very confident with the Keith rig, I decided to continue using him, as a 10 year old is still a child, and this way I can show more clearly how movements differ in different circumstances as the rig won't be altering between animations, making them easier to compare.

Aspects about the character that will affect performance :
- I will have this character be the height of 4ft"10, as this is the average height for a 10 year old boy, meaning that there is more of a chance of people understanding the age of the character, I will research how height and more specifically, age affects a walk cycle bellow.

- This character will be slightly overweight, I felt as though this aspect of the character will help to emphasise reduced height difference from the others, and would likely mean that there would be more of a 'waddle' from side to side.

- This character will be care-free, therefore having a very happy emotion, which will again be studied in depth below. As there is no particular aim for this character, he may not travel as straight forward or sequenced  as the other walk cycles.

The situation :

I imagine this character to be cheerfully walking home after the last day of school, having planned a sleepover at his best friends house for the next night earlier, therefore not having any worries, and a lot to look forward to. I kept this story relatively simple, as I don't think there is much point in fleshing out a story any more than that, as none of it will come up in the short animation.

Child walk secondary research

A very young child walk cycle. Notice how far the legs and arms swing outwards.

Another child walk cycle.

Things I learnt about a child walk -

• Legs tend to swing outwards, not just forward.
• There is a lot of space between each foot placement.
• The sequence almost feels like a march, as kids tend to stomp their feet more aggressively with each step. 

Happy walk secondary reseach

A breakdown of a very cheerful character's walk cycle. Notice how the body twists with the arm movements, meaning that there is more force behind them.

This is much more of a cartoon-style example of a happy walk cycle. Notice how much the up poses are emphasised.

Screenshot from a youtube video explaining walk cycles

Things I learnt about a happy walk -

• Body twists from side to side, following with the arm movements.
• The arm movements are two frames ahead of all the other movements, as the 
• The sequence almost feels like a march, as kids tend to stomp their feet more aggressively with each step.
• The contact poses are emphasised by having the take to longest to complete.
• Body is ached backwards, with the forward legs and arms being well ahead of the head placement.

With all of this information in the bank, I then proceeded to go through the same process as I went through on my previous animation, recording my own reference material and producing my own animation notes and illustration sheet.

'Joyful Child' animation sheet

Below is the final animation

https://vimeo.com/243617454

What went well -

• I feel as though I have somewhat achieved the 'double bounce' walk cycle, something that had always interested me yet I never thought to work on. This cycle has always interested me as it is something very suited towards cartoon-style animation, my main area of interest.
• The animation feels very lively, probably due to all the 'Overlapping Action' that I included by having many joints moving simultaneously within their own cycle, this is perfect for the context as a child of that age would likely be very lively.
• I think that I have successfully incorporated both defining features of this character into the walk cycle, them being his age, and his mood, meaning that I have learnt a lot with this exercise.

What have gone better -

• I am disappointed that I wasn't able to capture enough research on how a child walks so that I could successfully emulate a younger child, as a 4-7 year old would have been a lot more interesting and offer something else from my previous walk cycles.
• Due to the way in which I animate, having repeated sequences, I wasn't able to successfully get the random foot placements included, meaning that the cycle seemed too straight, direct and non reminiscent of how a child would walk when joyful.

What I will change next time -

• I will look into experimenting with animating characters of a more diverse age range in the future, thus gaining me more knowledge of how age affects movement.
• I will make sure that if the foot placements are following a random pattern, I will adapt the way I animate by positioning each placement manually after the initial sequence.