Moho Forum

These are two walk cycle and head turning tests for my upcoming animation teaser for the live VillikonChronicles movie.

This one is the sentinel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHCwW_7t ... annel_page

Mystere Walk cycle. This one I think I made the head turn too quick to notice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3IFHkSHWjQ

Let me know what you think and what to improve on.

Excellent work. Especially the Sentinel.

Yes, they are excellent. It's they entirely vector or it's a very carefully cut out?
Just one thing I can say you to improve. In the first one -the guy with the gun- the gun arm go too up some times in the cycle. He looks like with a hiccups attack. I think that just correcting that you will obtain a pretty perfect walkcycle. Clothes moving and the subtle turn of head gives it a lot of vitality.

selgin wrote: It's they entirely vector or it's a very carefully cut out?

It's entirely vector.

selgin wrote:In the first one -the guy with the gun- the gun arm go too up some times in the cycle. He looks like with a hiccups attack. I think that just correcting that you will obtain a pretty perfect walkcycle.

I'll try that to ease up on the movement of that arm. I was trying to maybe simulate how one would walk with a heavy gun like this one. The scene takes place in a dark cave.

The female character was kind of tricky for me since it was the first character I created in Anime Studio. The geometry and vector points were not too great. I was worried that her strides were a bit too long.

Thanks again,

I especially liked the first one.
Good job.

Nice Animation, but in both the animations they are walking in place?
How will you actaully calculate how much your character has to be shifted after each step?

Both very good, the first does a better job making me forget it is an animation.

One very minor change that might help. The Lady's right arm is not
articulating at all during the walk. Visually, the extended elbow pad confused me if it was somehow attached to the shoulder pad. I think
bending the elbow is more natural, will undue a slight stiff feel, and mostly
solve the optical illusion problem where it looked to me at first that she had a huge bicep, that the elbow pad was connected to the shoulder pad.

They are awesome though.

kkrawal wrote:Nice Animation, but in both the animations they are walking in place?
How will you actaully calculate how much your character has to be shifted after each step?

It's going to depend on the scenes. I'm currently designing backdrops for the scenes they're going to be in. I'm going to more of eyeballing the shifting because the walking scene will be short. The animated short will be mostly closeups.

I've uploaded some updated animation clips on both of them.
Mystere

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2finkDiAxi4


Sentinel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc96KHNsefA


Cheers,

I really love your face designs. They look perfect unlike a lot of illustrated female faces there's nothing that looks wrong about them. Nice work.

Cheers
D.K

Thanks D.K.
It was tricky for me at first getting the face just right with just using Vectors.

Here is the animation test of this complete scene...
I'm sorry the quality came out too dark. I'm still looking for ways to convert to H.264 perfectly.

This is in MPEG-4 format (.mov file)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FarogQKHvc

let me know what you think.

The foreground and background was created in photoshop.
Software: AS6

Cheers.

Mystere looks much better with the arm bending during the walk cycle.

One suggestion on your most recent mov, which is easily fixed, is that when the scene opens, the closest plant layer moves at exactly the speed of the farthest layer. But later in the scene, you do have the closer layer scrolling by faster. The illusion of reality would be much improved if you started that way too.

The two sentinels are great characters. Maybe they could use some lighter gray lines that highlight certain features of their attire/armor? Maybe something could help them contrast better with the scene. I really like their outlines/design, as well as their walk cycle.

Maybe they could use some lighter gray lines that highlight certain features of their attire/armor? Maybe something could help them contrast better with the scene. I really like their outlines/design, as well as their walk cycle.

I'll see what I can do. Originally the cloaks are gray. I don't know why this happens. Every time I upload a video to youtube, it gets darker.

If you look at the latest walk cycles of the sentinel, it's perfectly gray. That's because I was able to convert the animation to H.264 to upload to youtube. But, now AS 6 can't handle H.264.

I'm going to try to export TGA frames and export in a decent format through After Effects.

Thanks,

One suggestion on your most recent mov, which is easily fixed, is that when the scene opens, the closest plant layer moves at exactly the speed of the farthest layer. But later in the scene, you do have the closer layer scrolling by faster. The illusion of reality would be much improved if you started that way too.

(Note: They're Green Crystals)

Which part did you mean if I started "that way". The Large crystals in the foreground should be scrolling faster?

Thanks in advance,

Okay, let's be honest instead of saying "excellent". You post here for criticism to help you to improve too, yes?

The walk cycles are good to a certain degree, there's no doubt about that so don't take it too hard when I say that they can be improved upon. For example, the sentinel's left foot doesn't look like he's walking naturally, it's movement doesn't follow the natural lift and place pattern, please refer to Richard Williams' The Animator's Survival Kit for tips on how to create the natural movement pattern if you're unsure of what I mean. Also his right upper arm jaunts forward quickly toward the end of the movement, and isn't in fitting with the rest of the rather limited movement of the limb, I'd suggest you revise that.

As for the Mystere walk, her legs are what cause me the biggest problem, right leg especially jumps from it's contact position to the mid position very quickly, and isn't a smooth natural movement. I can also see that you've bound the feet to a single bone, thus limiting their movement. If the toe area could move up and down, you'd have something much more convincing.

As I said, don't take it too hard, just look to improve and you'll get even better results. As for the actual art style, I love the sentinel especially. Fantastic.