Final Animations

For convenience' sake, I've put all three of the animations for my final in this last post.


The Run Cycle:

The Talking Head:

The Idle Pose:

Idle Animation

Finally, I created an idle animation, to play when the character is standing still. I wanted this animation be a bit of an homage to the old Sonic the Hedgehog games, where if the player went too long without inputting anything in the controller, Sonic would look directly at the camera and tap his foot impatiently. Sonic the Hedgehog games were one of the inspirations for my Thesis.

However, my character IS supposed to be the wizened old mentor in my game, so I toned it down a bit, in order to prevent him from coming across as too impatient. He patiently raps his fingers against his arm, rather than defiantly placing them on his hips, and every now and then he glances at the screen, but without the angry scowl that Sonic puts on when he's raring to go. First, I worked on getting the finger rapping down:

After that, I added a simple tapping animation to his boot, in time with his finger rapping; his boot raises in the same frame that he lifts all his fingers, and the boot returns to the ground on the same frame that his pinky taps against his arm. Then he does another boot tap without any finger rapping, then another in sync with the fingers again. Around this time he also blinks, and when he opens his eyes, he's looking at the camera. He does this for a bit before blinking and looking off into the distance again. The final result is below:

Talking Head Animation

After completing the run cycle, I next began work on an animation for times when my character -- who serves as the mentor in the game I made for Thesis -- is communicating to the protagonist. In those times, a text box is supposed to appear at the top of the screen, with a portrait of the mentor's face 'talking' while the text scrolls.

To create this effect, I added a blinking animation -- when the character blinks, his eyes become half closed for one frame, then totally closed for another frame, then back to half closed, then back to completely open. The result is a little slower than an actual human's blinking speed, but it makes the effect more obvious and noticeable, as well. After that, I split his moustache into two halves, then made a frame where they were normal, a frame where they were rotated slightly upward, and a frame where they were rotated slightly downward. This was to give the impression that his mouth was moving, because his moustache is so large that the character's mouth is actually not visible. The final result is below.

Run Cycle Completed

Finally, I redid the line work of the character's body, added his belt, and colored him in. I decided to replace the hand behind his back, instead having the blade of his sword jutting out from behind him. The implication is that his other hand is grasping the hilt of his sword, reverse-grip style, out of sight of the viewer. I did this mostly because I was worried it would not be entirely clear that his other hand was being bent behind his back, and because I thought the addition of the sword made the character a little more visually interesting, and made it a little more clear that the character was, in fact, a ninja. The finished run cycle is below:

Run Cycle Continued

For my next assignment, instead of working on animating a rig in Maya, I opted to continue development of my character's run cycle. This seemed to be a better use of my time since I intended to work in 2D animation for this class rather than 3D animation. In the video below, I have drawn a profile shot of my character's face, and drew a new cloak and gauntlet to match his running pose, put them in the appropriate places for each frame, then created a short loop of the result.

       After that, I added boots to the animation. I also sped up the amount of time each frame lasted for, except I left the frames where both the character's feet were off the ground at the same time slightly longer (0.1 seconds instead of the 0.05 seconds the other frames last for) -- I figured that in that tiny moment that he was airborne, he would be moving a tiny bit slower, since his body was being carried forward at those points purely by momentum instead of actually being propelled forward by the character's legs.

Finished Character Design

After the run cycle draft, I took some time to finish the details and line work for my original character design, and then added color to it.

Run Cycle Drafting

For my next assignment, I created a draft of the run cycle animation I planned to create for my character. This draft lacked any sort of details or finesse, mostly serving to let me make sure I had the look of the leg movement right and that I was keeping the proportions consistent. I used this animation as a point of reference for the leg movement:

For my own character, I bent the torso farther forward, to give a better impression that the character was supposed to be running quickly. I also arranged his arms in a more 'ninja' sort of pose, with one hand in front and the other behind his back. It is a common trope that ninjas don't swing their arms like regular people when they run, and this page on TV tropes has details on how they are typically depicted running: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NinjaRun

Below is my draft. They have not yet been arranged into an animation, instead, I kept them all on a large image so that I could view each frame at the same time.