Assignment 2 - Jumping Animation

This is how I created a climbing up stairs and jumping animation:

Process:

Firstly, I used the walk cycle animation that I had done in part 1 of my assignment. I then deleted some frames in the back and left 4 steps behind.

Secondly, I made the character move up 3 flights of stairs and then ready himself to jump. I used the motion trial to guide me. Anticipation can also be seen from here.

Next, I created several key poses for the jump animation. This involves the lowest and highest points of the jump and the position of the hips, the legs, the hands and the spine. There were a lot of factors needed to make the animation look realistic.

Then, I made the character sustain impact from the jump caused and rebound back up into a recovery position so that the character would really seem like jumping, rather than just landing on the ground as if like a rock.

After recovery, I made the characters move two steps forward to a standing position so that I could prepare for the next part of my animation.

The final part of my animation is where the character looks at his legs for injuries and then waves his hand to the camera, signalling that he's okay and that no injuries were sustained. As you can see, there is ease in and ease out.

This is the storyboard for my jumping animation:

This is the playblast for my jumping animation:

Reflection:

Overall, this animation is probably the hardest I have ever done so far. It involves a lot of factors, such as gravity, weight shift and momentum. At first, I tried to do a long jump animation, which involves the character swinging his hands backward a few times before jumping far. However, the rig had limitations which didn't allow me to bend the legs to the way I want it to be. Therefore, I decided to go for a normal jump animation. The previous walk cycle animation also made this animating this jumping move slightly easier as I had experience with weight shift and hand movement. Overall, I felt that this animation was fun and fulfilling.

References:

I tried to use this as a reference to the long jump animation. However, the long jump animation failed. Nonetheless, this helped me to figure out the key poses for a normal jump animation.