Moho Forum

Hey Folks, I'm a big fan of animation and have recently bought Anime Studio Pro and am now taking my first steps (pun intended ) with rigging up a simple puppet so I can practice walks etc from the Animators Survival Kit by Richard Williams.

Here's a very simple test of a puppet I made by copying how the startup file is put together. It's 50kb, no preloader, so it may take a moment to appear if you're on dialup..

http://www.graphite9.com/StickmanRough.html

I'd appreciate any comments or criticism, particularly if anybody can give me some tips on how to get the feet to look more 'grounded' to the floor....the slide with the front foot when he changes direction is deliberate...but the rest of the sliding around isin't

Many Thanks..

i like it

Good walk!
if you don't want to use bone lock (I think only a few people uses it) You can correct the slide of the foot with the onion skin feature that AS Pro has.

Genete

Thanks for the comments guys, I posted an update, this time walking in place,I used a guide line and onion skinning to get the feet on the ground a little better.. needs lots more work but it's a start.. it's at the same link above..

Hey Folks,
Just posted a couple of updates.. the first one is an improved generic cartoon walk, the 2nd is my own tweak of that starting point, the plan was to make the figure look sad..

They're at the same link above..

Any comments or criticism appreciated..

Thanks

Where do I have seen the second (sad) one ? Mmmm let me think

Good work!

hehe...
nice walks... only thing that bugs me a little is the way the knees POP when the foot hits the floor - looks painful :p... maybe have the weight go down at the central cross over position?

keep experimenting

Thanks for the feedback guys..

I see what you mean about the knees popping.. I'll have another go and see if I can cure that.. Thanks..

I really like the dynamics of your walks. You managed to avoid the 'tweening' feel you get when people delegate too much thinking to keyframes.

Thank you for the compliment.. At the moment I'm just trying to get the hang of this stuff so perhaps the loose feel is not entirely deliberate

I'm glad you like the feel of it though, I was listening to music while doing the walk and was trying to get a nice rhythm to the cycle..


I just added another one too.. this one I call 'frantic' and it definitely has a loose feel!

http://www.graphite9.com/StickmanRough.html

Horganovski,

Would you care to post your anme file?

I would like to learn from it.

It's really just the bone rig from the startup file with the simple limbs I drew in AS replacing the original images.
All of the limbs started off as rectangles and then I added a few points here and there to make rough shapes.I kept each one on a separate layer and grouped them under the bone layer the way the startup file was..
My goal was to keep the shapes very basic so that it would force me to work more on the poses and not get stuck too much on the 'look' of the thing..

In fact I noticed earlier one of the points on the arm is not weighted to the bone properly so I have to go fix it!..

Thanks for checking it out..

Thats a very good walk cycles put by you ... Horganovski ... can you put the anime file ... would be great to study..

I didn't get to fix some of those errant points yet, but here's the file of the bone rig with the 1st (the most generic) walk on the page I linked to..
I'd be interested to see what kind of body you give him if you decide to..

Please don't take my file as an example of the 'right' way to do it, as I'm still very much a beginner..

http://www.graphite9.com/Stickman_skeleton.anme

i don't have a copy of ASpro installed here at work, but i'll look it up when i get home soon.

i'm guessing the ease-in ease-out was implemented there, or maybe it was set to step instead of interpolation.