Workshop: Weight Shift
During the Weight Shift workshop, my tutor pointed out that my animation looked a little floaty, as if the character wasn’t fully grounded.
This feedback helped me realise that I need to pay more attention to how the character’s weight shifts and how the body responds to gravity. In my next revision, I will focus on improving the timing, balance, and centre of gravity to make the movement feel more natural and convincing.
Walk Cycle
Learning Reflection
This week, we focused on Walk Cycle Animation and learned how to create a natural walking movement by understanding basic body mechanics.
One of the most important things I learned is that walking is not simply about moving the legs forward and backward. It involves the movement of the entire body, especially the shifting of weight and the coordination between different body parts. Since walking is such a familiar movement in everyday life, even small mistakes in timing or balance can make an animation look unnatural.
During the lesson, we studied the four key poses of a walk cycle: Contact, Down, Passing, and Up. These poses helped me understand how the body’s weight and height change during each step. I also learned about the importance of the Centre of Gravity (COG), including how the hips move up and down, shift from side to side, and rotate during walking.
Another interesting point was how the chest, head, and arms respond to the movement of the lower body. The arms do not simply swing independently. Their movement is connected to the body’s motion, involving principles such as Follow Through and Overlapping Action.
Assignment: Walk Cycle (Lower Body blk)
During this week’s Walk Cycle assignment, my tutor pointed out that my character’s feet were not making full contact with the ground, which made the walking movement look less natural.
I also learned that the hips should not move forward and backward in a walk cycle in place. Instead, I should focus on the hips’ side-to-side rotation and up-and-down movement. Otherwise, the animation may look strange when the character actually moves forward in space.