Continued to work on yesterdays walk cycle with help from both Campbell and Susanna. Added more steps to the cycle and animated the upper half of the character too.
I have yet to finish the animation, but I'm happy with what I have so far. I'm still enjoying the simplicity of the rig. I'd much rather use a rig with little to no automation than one with complex or fiddly controls. Although I've previously animated a couple of walk cycles, I always fall into the same trap of not animating the hips first. This always results in deletion of 90% of the keyed poses and starting over.
The second attempt went much better, and I found myself bashing out poses fairly quickly. After hearing Campbell's thoughts on 'straight ahead' stop motion animation, where each frame has to have every detail of animation for every character frame after frame, I have a greater respect for the layered work flow that animation in 3D allows the user. Roughly blocking out the animation with Maya, and then being able to go back and add finesse before rendering is a much more flexible approach to animation.
I always find animation difficult, which heightens my respect for those who make a living out of it, like Campbell and Susanna.
So far I am enjoying the workshops, although they haven't convinced me to switch my focus to character animation. I don't feel that I would have the patience to become an animator in industry.
I think that for anyone who is genuinely keen on becoming a full time animator, these workshops are invaluable – so far we haven't done anything too new to us, but the advice and experience of two industry professionals is interesting and informative.
Questions raised from the activity: How early should I go to bed tonight?
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