On The Ballie

This week we started playing with a new character - Ballie. Basically, a ball with legs. (Think Monsters, Inc's Mike Wazowski without the arms and giant eyeball.) We'll be using this character well into the next semester.

First on our list: the Walk Cycle. A walk cycle is an animated walk that can be looped to show a continuous walk for many steps forward, backward, what have you. (Cycles aren't just a computer-enabled trick - they were first developed by animators back in the 30's, and were used extensively in Hanna-Barbara cartoons like Scooby-Doo & The Flintstones [and weirder crap like Space Ghost and Dino-Boy, which I had to compress at work last week. Oi-vay.])

Needless to say, there's a lot more intricacy to the human walk than most people may think. It's not as simple as up-forward-down, as you can see:



You may notice that the motion is kinda stuttery - only one new frame per every three frames. This is just a first pass on the main poses of the walk, and this coming week, we refine the motion with inbetweens, which will add the constant motion that we all know and love.

And here's a revision to last week's Tailor animation:



We also had another Stu pose this week. To show a feeling of "strength." I couldn't really come up with anything that wasn't cliche:
As always, click for a larger view. To try to overcome the cliche a bit, I decided to add a bit of fictional fun to it:
Stu lifting the Giant Block of Doom. I also included a surprised Tailor, just because I was a little upset that Tailor was a one-assignment wonder. :-)

So, now I'm off to a public place to stare at people walking. I hope I don't get the crap beaten out of me.