It’s been awhile sense my last post.  Work is picking up and school is too.  I’ve been animating, but I haven’t produced really anything I’d like to post.  However, I started a new walk cycle last night and here’s the first progress video.  I also wanted to post an animation exercise I did of a little girl turning her head.

My goal is to go ahead and work in perspective.  I don’t see any reason not to challenge myself.  So, here’s a 360 walk cycle I’m working on.  It will be a person eventually, but I wanted to keep it simple and animate the parts of the person separately.  So far, it’s not timed and the key drawings are evenly spaced.  I simply animated the 5 key positions of the walk and put them on 2 exposures at 24 frames per second.  The animation is looped four times.

I’ve learned plenty of lessons with my past few failed attempts at animating a basic walk and I’m learning plenty with this walk as well.  The next challenge I have is to figure out how to time this walk and how to space out the inbetweens.  The key of this exercise is to learn the proper approach and though process when it comes to planning a walk or any character animation for that matter.

What I learned on the head turn animation was, cleaning up animation is a not an easy thing to do.  Rough pencil test work great because there’s more information for the eye to follow the animation.  However, when you clean up the animation to a single lines, it will look awful if the lines are not precise.  What happens is, things jump all over the place, things get bigger and smaller and the nice animation you worked out, really doesn’t work at all.

To add to the problem, I’m drawing on a tablet and when you put down a line, if the line is too thin, the computer changes the curve of the line.  So, it’s near impossible to retain the integrity of the line even when I know what I’m doing.  Thus, I end up with jumping lines.  Anyway, here’s my head turn exercise.

In my latest study of Rabbit Seasoning, I’m taking both previous lessons to the next level and applying both of them to this lesson.  Lesson three is the attitude walk.  In Rabbit Seasoning, every action is driven by the emotions of the characters.  As Ollie Johnston, the legendary Disney animator, always was over heard saying, “What is the character thinking?”  The character’s thoughts drive everything they do.  So, in the following sketches, notice how the characters attitude and emotion drives how they walk.  Daffy is always sneaking around making plans to destroy Bugs Bunny.  Elmer Fudd is tip-toeing through the woods with his rifle in a focused, determined stalk.

Here’s where we take lesson 2 to the next level.  Notice in the drawings above, I’ve also made a study of where the shoulder and hip joints are located during Elmer Fudd’s and Daffy Duck’s walks.  When the leg is out front it will pull that hip joint forward.  When the leg is back, it will pull the joint back.  The same for the arms.  It’s ultimately a study of body mechanics and perspective.  In animation, including all the twisting of the torso, the alternating placement of hip and shoulder joints adds more fluid, believable movement.  It adds depth and perspective.  And, all of this is presented with all three characters in Rabbit Seasoning.

Below, I’ve utilized an attitude walk exercise from Eric Goldberg’s book.  I used his directions and drawings as a guide and animated an attitude walk.  Can you guess the character’s attitude?  It may be difficult since the character has no face.  I’ve worked to apply the lessons discussed above in this animation exercise.

Everything you need to learn in animation can be found in a classic Looney Tunes short film.  October is Rabbit Season and for my sketchbook, I’ll be breaking this cartoon down to individual animation principles.

You can watch the whole short from my other blog, Drawings in Motion.

Lesson 1 from Chuck Jones’ masterpiece, Rabbit Seasoning: Attitude in expression and posture

A. Every facial expression is crystal clear.  Daffy is not sort of angry, he is clearly angry.

B. The entire body expresses how Daffy feels.

C. His attitude effects how he moves.  Here’s a simplified breakdown of an angry Daffy walking over toward Elmer Fudd to give him a piece of his mind.