First walk cycle from Zac – produced in Photoshop and Imageready. What do you think of it? Constructive criticism please. How do you feel about the difference between a walk cycle on the spot or a travelling cycle as Williams recommends? Does either way make it easier for you to analyse or look more natural?

Email me your walk cycles and we can all have a chance to look at them before next Wednesday and talk about them – have a closer look at the mechanics of them and maybe suggest changes (if you feel they are needed).

Adam

Just in – our first submission. Top work Zac.

We’ll be going through some walk cycle goodness on Wednesday lunchtime so bring your Richard Williams books along.

Adam

Take a look at this website. It’s an average of 80 walks captured on a treadmill. You can move sliders and get different walks based on different criteria: happy or sad, fat or thin etc. The best thing is you can put in your own options and produce new walks based on these observations.

Adam

Check out this excellent tutorial on walk cycles which will be applicable for everyone following – even those who want to stick to 2D, Dave.

Don’t forget, post any useful links in the comments section.

Adam

Ok, shaky start I know, but go through the disc and you’ll soon be better than me at Blender. (Won’t take much time.) It is a bit tedious, but watch the Mancandy videos and follow along bit by bit and it won’t be long before you are moving the rig around. If you don’t, you may well get frustrated. There is a learning curve, but once we are over it, you will be pleasantly surprised.

A few key points to remember with Blender:
the right mouse button selects,
the left mouse button OKs things when you have made a movement.
Move objects with the g key (for grab)
Rotate objects with r
Scale objects with s

Any questions – post them here. Don’t forget: there is no such thing as a stupid question. If there is something you are unsure of, there is a good chance someone else doesn’t and is too afraid to ask. On the other hand there is a good chance that someone does know and will be only too pleased to show you the answer.

I’ll add some links to Blender tutorials and forums. They’ll be in the list to the right of the page.

Please post any poses you make in the comments or send them to me via email – adamaf (at) gmail (dot) com – and I will post them in the blog.

Adam

Hi everyone,

The animation basics course will run on Wednesday lunchtimes from about 12 ’til 12.30. Not long, I know, but it should really just be a jumping off point for further adventures during the week.

I’m hoping to cover the material from the Richard Williams book and not go too deeply into the computer side of things (that is unless people would like me to.) We’re going to be using a pre-rigged character so we don’t have to worry about modelling, textures and all that malarkey. Just moving a funny computer guy around and trying to give him some life.

The blog will contain course notes, discussion, files, pictures and anything else useful you may want to add. It’s not just my blog – it’s yours as well and the more we put it in, the more we will all get out. So please add any discoveries, set-backs or anything cool (and relevant) you’ve found.

Adam