Another Walk Cycle

Status: Complete (for now)

Rig Credit: Mery from the Mery Project

Software: Maya 2018

LATEST VERSION: Cleanup

2/5/18

I wanted to test the Mery rig so I blocked in a walk cycle to take a step back from the Door Gag shot. I also wanted to use Mery in future shots, so this seemed like a good way to get to know the rig first. 

And I'm pretty glad I did. When I started, I had a bit of trouble with her having wonky jelly knees that stayed fixed under her hips...

I found the answer to that on the 11 Second Club Forums, bless the internet and the animation community. 

I jumped back to my reference from the first walk cycle I did. 

A couple hours later, here I am. I'm absolutely astonished this rig is available for free. 

Playing with her face is going to be a lot of fun. :D I messed around with the controls to become more familiar with them with a target emotion in mind. Can you guess what it is? 

I'm hoping you guessed something along the lines of "slightly smug." 

2/6/18

Since I spent more time playing with her face rather than actually doing the walk cycle yesterday, I went back to poke at the rough pass more today. 

2/7/18

I spent a lot of time today cleaning up the blocking to get to something more polished. She's starting to look pretty good, I think. Another session will be enough to get her complete, I believe. 

2/8/18

I took a second look at her shoulder movement and tried to prevent it from moving too much. It seems to me that there's a bit of popping and stiffness in her shoulders, especially from the front and 3/4s view. I think tomorrow I will try scaling back her upper body movement and key in some rotation in her shoulders. 

2/10/18

Some detail work in the shoulders and upper body, I want to tackle her hair next.

2/19/18

I grew really frustrated with the cycle, everything I did to clean her up seemed to end up being wrong. I put the work down for a few days and took a weekend away from the challenge altogether. 

Upon coming back, I showed the animation to a few peers and mentors, and it was like I could suddenly see everything much more clearly and I could see what I needed to do. Unfortunately it meant redoing a lot of the work, but I'm much happier with where she's going. Plans later include paying attention to her hands and figuring out why her feet look odd from the front. 

3/3/18

It's been harder to keep on top of this challenge and also on top of homework and project work... but it's still my favorite time of day when I know I can block off a couple of hours to work on a shot.