Advanced Animation: Project I & II - Walking Cycles + Jumping Animation

 MODULE GCD 61604: Advanced Animation 

Tristan Vaughan Sleep - 0365120

Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media

Advanced Animation - Projects I + II: Walking + Jumping animations

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MODULE INSTRUCTIONS:

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“SEPT 2025: GCD 61604 / ADVANCED MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET”

Exercises: Bouncing Ball Animation (Weighted 10%)

Project I: Students of the cohort are tasked with producing and managing an animation project individually in which they must produce two character walking sequences. One of the sequences must be a generalised walk with competent understanding of flow and timing while the second must be a more exaggerated, expressive motion. The outcome of this exercise is for the students to produce a video/videos of various bouncing balls which will be recorded in 1280 x 720p at 24fps and should be uploaded to their personal E-portfolio.

Project II: Students of the cohort are tasked with producing and managing an animation project individually in which they must produce two character jumping sequences. One of the sequences must be a generalised walk with competent understanding of flow and timing while the second must be a more exaggerated, expressive motion. The outcome of this exercise is for the students to produce a video/videos of various bouncing balls which will be recorded in 1280 x 720p at 24fps and should be uploaded to their personal E-portfolio.

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Project II - Walking Animation:

WEEK V - VII: Use of Advanced Animation + Walking Animation

Timing & Reference: For this first major project, students have been asked by the lecturer to create two short animations depicting the walking animation of their character within a scene. For the best learning outcomes, students have been advised to reference the previously used ‘Animators Survival Guide Kit’ novel - specifically on the section related to walking motion. This section of the novel provides visual aids as well as documenting the time in-between each major motion + the potential need for break-down frames to render a smoother animation. Furthermore, with the first animation completed, students would then be able to use it as a reference to a more exaggerated, expressive second animation - identifying how ideas can be communicated through motion.

Animation Breakdown: For the first part of the exercise, the advice given to us by the lecturer was to reference the main walking animation found within the novel and to copy it somewhat as closely as possible - a process similar to the previous exercise task. The only difference this time was to be mindful of the timing of said animation with us needing to create multiple frames and acceptable distances to create understandable movement. With the first pass completed, students would then be expected to go in between their newly created frames and add in some ‘breakdowns’ which can better set the tempo of the movement as this creates new frames for the 3D software to animate between. Finally, with our animations completed, students could make last-minute adjustments using the new ‘Graph-Editor’ panel which informs the 3D software on how to animate between each frame. This can bring a little bit more life to the piece as the speed and pacing of the motion will feel more natural rather than strict points.

Inverse Kinematics vs Forward Kinematics: an additional layer to this project was the introduction of Inverse and Forward Kinematics - two different styles of animation students would need to consider when animating. In basics, Inverse kinematics on a model means that parts such as the hands or feet dictate the motion and movement of the rest of the limb - if the hand is pulled closer to the body, the elbow will bend and the wrist will rotate to make it possible. Forward Kinematics makes each individual bone possible and has to be manually changed to create a sense of motion - if the hand is pulled closer to the chest, the animator has to reposition the forearm/upperarm/wrist to make it possible. Each method of animation has its pros and cons which is up to the student to make the decision. Personally, I preferred to animate using the FK system as it gave more refined control over the appearance of the model and would allow me to make smaller changes.

“Project one: First Animation - Neutral Walking Cycle”

The Second Animation: For the second animation, a majority of the process was similar to the first animation but saw the introduction of elements from the previous exercises as well. When looking through the novel again, a part of the ‘walking’ section also breaks down the idea of attitude-based walks; looking at language designs to imply a feeling. In the example I used, the novel documents that ‘happier’ characters should have a more exaggerated walk where they have the illusion of bouncing (transitioning from smaller to larger motions.) This way their extreme motion indicates an extreme feeling and the joyous movement communicates the message better to the audience. Other than just relying on the novel, I also looked at the previous exercises and my poses for Happiness to see if I could translate the frame into motion.

“Project one: First Animation - Attitude Walking Cycle”

Overall, this first animation project presented a few unique challenges which can be seen somewhat within the final products. The first major one pointed out was the timing of the animations - while events occur at a good pace as what a walking animation should look like; it unfortunately has moments where the translation between the frames looks unnatural. Moving forward, this effect can be minimised by better understanding break-down frames and placing them more effectively to make the animation smoother. The second major point would be the range of motion of the character - they can feel a bit stiff especially with the arms. This is an animation issue which can be resolved by being more daring and trying more complex poses.

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Project II - Jumping Animation:

WEEK VII - X: Jumping Animation

Reference: For this second Major Animation Project, students have been asked to produce a series of jumping animations with one of them being realistically depicted while the other is expected to use more exaggerated movements. For this project, I found that the best references would come from finding existing examples of how people jump in the real world - understanding the motion of how people move can show how it can also be exaggerated from a greater effect. To do this, I’d look online for examples of people jumping short distances and contrasted the findings with animations made by others (especially the more design-heavy ones) to see what each animation needs. Finally, I’d revisited the novel once again and looked more into its chapter on jumping - choosing to get the exaggerated motions from its diagrams.

Unlike the first project, this time I elected to start with the more extreme animation as it was the one I had the most resources for which could hopefully support me in making the second animation. When it came to animating this scene, I chose to mainly use FK motion as it was better suited for when characters leave the ground and it was also useful in creating more extreme poses such as ‘snow’ being compressed in mid-air at the apex of his jump. By also creating the more exaggerated motion first, I can also see where to reduce these elements to be more in line with real-world depictions.

“Project Two: First Animation - Exaggerated Jumping Cycle”

For the second animation, I’d begun developing using the timing of the first one as a guide as well as looking at real-world examples to see how natural motion looks. The first major change is the pacing of the anticipation - in the first animation, its a crouch into a jump while the second needs the person to change into a better stance and then ‘throw themselves’ into the jump. This can be improved upon by adding slight ‘squash and stretch’ ideas such as getting small before stretching out completely. While I mentioned that this second animation would not be as exaggerated, it's still in the interest of the medium to add actions it can only achieve. 

“Project Two: Second Animation - Natural Jumping Cycle”

With the final animation created for this project, I found this one to have gone a lot better than the first. While I still have some difficulty with the timing of the motion - which may take some further practise to tune; I believe I got better in recognising poses and how to better adapt them for the frames. However, this animation is not without its faults. One of the downsides in both this and the previous tasks is the lighting - sometimes it's not always the best or doesn’t always highlight the right parts of the scene. In future examples, it's better to get a sense of where to place lights in the scene to clearly define the action.