Ok its in the right section this time

Making a walk cycle is giving me a bit of trouble...this is my latest attempt, though im not sure its any better than the first : (

Original thread: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=25378

You'll feel much more at home here in the Students area.

I really have no suggestions on this. You've done a pretty nice walk cycle.
Could it be improved? Sure, but improvement takes it out of the basic exercise and takes it into storytelling.
If you want to pursue that by all means do!

It is said (Walt Stanchfield I believe) that when you animate you must animate verbs not nouns.
This is to say think of the emotion that drives the motion.
Think of the mood that drives the pose.

Is s/he sad? (Looks a bit that way in your walk cycle) Play that up perhaps with drooping head if appropriate.

Where is s/he going?
What caused the current action? Why walk across the floor at all?

Now that you ARE the flour sack ask yourself these questions and formulate more of your own.

Here is a very sad flour sack walking quite slowly. Maybe I'll make a happy sack walk later...or I could incorporate the walk into something else.

lol nice man, make him do a back flip!!!!! or is that to much....

Hey, good idea. I could work on that...

Edit: It's harder than I thought to find a good reference (seeing as I cannot and will never do a backflip).
I watched a few pixelated videos on youtube and google video...but its annoying because it won't let you skip frame to frame, only about every other second...I made a kind of cheat sheet from the combination of them (below). Not sure how I will accomplish this with a flour sack...

Yup. That's a sad sack. (That a good thing!)

Hi,
In reference to the backflip-
I found this video and it says to jump UP not back. Your thumbnail looks like it is going back. Here's the link.

http://www.livescience.com/php/video/playe...deo_id=Backflip

Cheers,
Lori Hiatt

Thanks for the additional link.

I know it looks like he is moving across the page in my drawing, but really its just because I didnt want to draw on top previous frames. Its just a note to myself for what positions in the air/on the ground the sack will take. I'll keep in mind, however, that there should be minimal backward motion.

Here is my first attempt at a flour sack backflip. I think I may need to make it higher and faster.

Hey... I like that one.
You've got some great weight (and character) showing in there.

I often view animation backward to help analyse frame flow and with yours something caught my eye.
I think you've stumbled upon a useful tool in that you had your flour sack repeat the jump twice.
My brain wouldn't let go of the idea that you had almost all the necessary frames in there to do several other animations. So... I decided to test something out.

Assuming you can view it (some have reported not being able to view animated Gif images) here is a re-sequenced animation of your four sack jumping. All the frames are yours I just reinserted some to give him a little anticipatory crouch prior to the jump. Click on the image to activated the animation.

All this I guess to say... great job!

There may be an extra frame in the animation (looks like a kick). My inability to do a Full Edit on a post is preventing me from replacing it. Ah well...

Rodney-

Thanks for the feedback.

I am able to see animated GIFs (though I must admit I always have a moment of confusion before realizing I have to click on the image )That's interesting that you could do that with the same frames...I'm beginning to like this flour sack more and more...It's quite versatile, really. Next question is what to try next.

Perhaps he could negotiate some kind of obstacle?

A popular one these days is to have a character come up on a drop off where they realize the peril they are in (or just missed falling into).

Or... perhaps more difficultly a run and jump with a failure (surprise us!) at the end.

A simpler one might be a head tucked in roll with a final "Tadaa!"
...a hand stand with a flop.
...stretching exercises... touching his toes.
...two flour sacks playing belly bouncing (their form of Sumo wrestling).
...climbing an obstacle.
...avoiding an obstacle.
...banging his head on the wall... trying to come up with ideas to animate.

Keep at it!

I know this thread is two months old, so you may not be tracking it, shortdog. I have just started the animation boot camp and for inspiration, I've been surfing through other's projects. You've done an excellent job with the first stab at the sack doing a back-flip. My only comment is that there is no set up. That moment of exertion where the sack has to perhaps bend down a bit and push off to get the momentum to do the back flip. I hope that makes sense. The flip itself looks wonderful. But it doesn't look like there was any set up for it. Take a look at gymnasts when they do a back flip (or any flip for that matter). You'll see that they bend their legs and squat a bit in preparation to push off of the floor.

I hope that helps! I also hope I can get to the sack myself one day .

- Michael

Thanks, Michael. I haven't been able to do anything in A:M recently because my computer is out for repair (its power supply pretty much died and various parts are burned from overheating). However, when reviewing the video I posted I see what you are talking about. Whenever I get my computer back I'll work a bit on that.

Thanks

Maddy Trower

I haven't posted in a while...but I installed A:M on another computer...so I'm back in action. I made another sack and he's ready to go. I'm going to start another backflip from scratch, hopefully to be an improvement on my first one!

Here's a quick screenshot of him dancing...

Here is a somewhat rushed version of a flour sack doing a back flip. I tried to go for exaggeration before the jump, but I think it might have been too much. Also, I've been having trouble with the timing and height of the jump. What do you think? (ignore the funky-ness on the sack's back. I was too lazy to fix it)

a few comments i have are as follows: 1) when the sack jumps into the back flip speed that up just a little bit and 2) usually when someone does a backflip and they are in midair, their body is shaped like an upside down U, not an upright U. try making the sack have a more upside down U. that should make it look a lot better. well those are my 2 cents. hope they help.

Ugh I let myself slack off from AM for months again! Oh well, I readjusted the action and now the liftoff is faster and the flour sack is fully extended at the peak of its jump. However I keep getting the "buffer overload" message once I try to view the rendered quicktime .mov. It must be a problem with Quicktime...How can I revert to the earlier quicktime version if this is so?

My new project for the sack is to trip, fall, and then crawl off the screen. I got the trip and fall in the choreography and created a crawling action with stridelength so he can move along a path. I have the trip and fall cued up but when I applied the "crawl" action the sack pops off the path and performs the crawling action only facing along the intersection of the Axes (axises?).

(I would give a video example but my quicktime is screwed up)

Edit:

I made the trip and fall into an action. In a new chor I gave it a short path then created another path for the crawling. When I drag the crawling action onto mr. sack and constrain him to the second path, he just slides along without moving an arm. I'm such a n00b X_____x Aaaagh! I'm sure this is a small problem, like a box to check or something...but how can I fix this/what is the problem? Can someone give me a hint?