Dev log 4

In this particular dev log I wanted to show off my character walking in all 4 directions.  And to be totally honest I have been struggling with animating my character even though they are a human they have a very unique silhouette having an oversized cape and witch hat. Her hat was supposed to bounce up and down as she moved forwards and backwards then drag behind her during the left to right animations but I didn’t think my animations were good enough. So, I decided to create some "bones" using a stick figure and that made the process a lot easier for me given the simplicity of the figures. 

initial concept

The black mage from final fantasy was the inspiration for my character and their animation since the black mage just like my witch wears an oversized hat and keeps their eyes hidden.

My character is a witch so I wanted to do a walk cycle that represented that. I played around with two types having her hat bounce and float in the air and another where she squashes and shrinks herself as she walks before stretching back up to her full height. The two walks didn’t look very good but I kept them as concepts for later. (The still images that you see above) I eventually added arms and legs to the animation to give it more life with arms adding a necessary arc to the animation. Then I have my walk up/down cycle; the purpose was to have a little hip swing as she walked and I wanted it to coincide with the hat bounce making a follow through where we see the hat in the air whenever she walked. These rough sketches were made in procreate and I liked them but they didn’t match what I was looking for animation wise when I tried so I made my bones instead. (Maybe I can place my witch over the bones in the future) I went with a hat slide for my follow through animation for my witch sway so whenever they swish to the left, gravity would shift the hat to the right.

Walk up and down

I wanted to play with squash and stretch. For my bones, I had my character poke their hip out and as they walked it stretched out then squashed itself as the character swished their hips back and forth. It's an exaggerated motion that's supposed to be funny and sassy. Same thing for my witch only the hip looks rounder.

For my follow through I used the arms swaying behind the characters back as they walk with the focus being on the hands changing placement while the shoulders and upper arms stay relatively close to the body.

Walk back and forth

For the bones, A very standard walk cycle nothing too fancy. There's a little bit of a bounce to make the character seem a little livelier but nothing too crazy or out there. And I feel like my bounce gave a bit of an arc just like my hip sway while mainly for squash and stretch it added a nice curve or arc to my animation. For my witch,  The arc can be seen as the witch sways each arm back and forth as they walk. And as for the squash and stretch as she walks you can see her get smaller and her cape hides her feet and there’s a follow through with the hat bouncing then landing back on top of her head as she stands back up.

Conclusion

I’ve grown to like my animations but it would be nice to have the bottom of the cape ruffle itself when certain actions are performed, maybe have the hat slide down her face when searching for items, and lastly maybe have her cape fly open a little at times, that would be some fun secondary animations. After this dev log, I'm probably going to be making the switch over to strictly paper and procreate because I can't seem to find my footing using digital mediums such as “piskel” to draw and animate my characters. I can scan my hand drawn pictures and color them online; but yeah, I've been struggling with animating too much and will be focusing on paper sketches so that in the future I have wonderful looking animations.