Character Animations and Critique (Part 1)

Character animations and critique

For my Animations on my character I decided to base it on realism and do it just as a test to how well I can animate since I’ve never done it before, my main focus was to create animations that would be difficult but accessible by someone who hadn’t done it like me. As well as this they were not made with the idea to go into my final demo game at the end of the year which looking back I think was a good idea since it means I had more creative freedom with them.

Animation 1 Clapping

For my first one i decided to do simple stand and clap but I wanted to do it slow to try and indicate sarcasm, my inspiration for this was from the taunts used In the game destiny.

And here is the result

As you can see I did get the slow clap working but I was not happy since I didn’t really capture much emotion in the movement like I wanted to this was down to the rest of the body looking a little stiff for future development I will try to add more secondary movements to try and create a more realistic animation.

Animation 2 Waiting Idle

My Second Animation is an idle but I didn’t want a simple stood still idle pose which is common so I made use of a prop in the form of a wall that the character leas against and after a while he will check his watch signalling impatience, I did this because I thought the use of a prop would make it harder to make look realistic, since people can spot when physics are not right with an animation so this means the animation would have to be spot on to look like it fit.

And here is the result

As you can see from the video the animation worked out quite nice I thought but still I think it would of benefited from my animating more sections so it looked more natural.to do this I would simply go back into my file and add some simple rotations to the chest to simulate breathing and also add in some changes to the facial expression.

Animation 3 Waving

My third animation is a wave, when I was first think of doing this animation my first idea was for a simple wave as I to greet someone so not much in the way of movement so I scrapped hat idea since I thought it was too easy so I kept the same idea but made it more complicated by adding I a double handed wave and a hop as if to try to get someone’s attention from far away while keeping the initial wave.

And here is the result

As you can see from the video the animation turned out really well I’m especially happy about this one because it has a lot of movement in it and it doesn’t feel fake it looks as though a person would move like that. The only way I’d improve this would be to go into set frames and smooth out the result and then add some movement to the face so he doesn’t have the same expression.