Jump animation

 

Jump animation

To start my research into how the jump animation would be created, I wanted to get an idea of the key poses that would be incorporated.

I noted that there were 6 poses;

• The idle
• anticipation/ build up
• Initial jump contact
• Highest/ peak pose
• Recovery
• Neutral/ idle pose

Richard William’s jump breakdown.(Williams, 2001).

As Williams’ poses are very exaggerated, I wanted to have a look at a realistic reference. I found a great one online. Using this, I refined the feet positions and the arms. In fact, I redid the arm movements entirely, due to some faults I found that twisting of the upper arm was occurring when I moved them passed a certain point. Alec explained that this could be due to two things; the gimble mode and the twist correction not being on. I did both of these things and it prevented the twisting to a certain point- I think it also gives to the limits of the rig itself.

The jump reference that I used. I slowed the video in Quicktime Player to get a better look at the poses. (YouTube, 2016).

After I created this rough blocking, I went back and added additional poses, to give a better idea of timing. Andrew Coyle explained this really well in his blog. He created a really useful diagram (below) of the breakdowns of body positions for the jump.

Andrew’s diagram. (Cloytoons.wordpress.com, 2016).

This was one of the things I found the most confusing when doing the walk cycle- the shape of the back and tilt of the hips. This was a really great reference for me – Andrew would be proud!

My next stages will be to start polishing up the jump itself, giving a bit of ease in and out, and fixing the overlapping action in the arms.

Wish me luck!

References

Williams, R. (2001). The animator’s survival kit. London: Faber.

YouTube. (2016). Jump Reference 59.94fps. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4kr4dGU4qA [Accessed 15 Oct. 2016].

Cloytoons.wordpress.com. (2016). Animation | CLOY TOONS. [online] Available at: https://cloytoons.wordpress.com/category/creative-strategies/animation/ [Accessed 15 Oct. 2016].