The Personality Walk
So here’s this week’s assignment. The Personality Walk. It’s all about how much personality can you communicate in just a walk cycle. Even a ball with legs can have personality. FFS, just look at Wall-E. It’s a box with so much damn personality it’s ridiculous!
Anyway, I’ve been having a hard time with this. I tried making a walk based on my video reference. But it came out pretty bland and not very appealing. And, it isn’t conveying the personality that I want it to. Here is the rough draft:
[qt:http://animation.redforty.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/personality_v01.mov 480 360]
It sucked… a lot. So I started exaggerating some of the key poses and sort of ‘fell into’ a new idea. As I was tweaking his ‘extreme ups’, I saw that it kind of looked like a skip. So I decided to run with the idea of having him in a brisk walk with one skip toward the end. I really suck at sketching out my ideas, so I didn’t bother. I just started blocking straight ahead. Here’s the second result:
[qt:http://animation.redforty.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/personality_v02.mov 480 360]
It’s better, but the timing sucks badly. I’m not really sure how to fix it without re-shooting the video reference with the new idea and recalibrating the timing. Ugh… It’s a lot of work any way you slice it.
Here is the same animation but with smoother timing on the extremes. Overall, the whole thing is shorter.
[qt:http://animation.redforty.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/personality_v03.mov 480 360]
Hilarious. It looks like the first and second versions are identical.