CHARACTER DESIGN - TVPAINT FILES

This was the main session focusing on our actual animations for our chosen characters. The animations we had to make were the remaining two bullet points from this post, those being:

• ANIMATED WALK CYCLE
• ANIMATED TURNAROUND

We used TVPaint for these animations; we had done a tutorial in the program a week prior, but I still wasn't too used to it. My forte when it comes to digital animation is Adobe Animate, so TVPaint had a steep learning curve. The two work very differently, from small things like shortcuts & hotkeys, to how line smoothing works and TVPaint's pixelated format vs Animate's vector based format.

(TVPaint's new file interface - credit: TVPaint Development website)

I decided to tackle the turnaround first, since it seemed like a pretty good stepping on point after learning the basics. Going from the basics straight to a walk cycle seemed daunting, so taking smaller steps and getting to know the program more was important to me and how I work.

I used both my original A3 sketches and my Photoshop files to get my reference for C2, my chosen character, and how they'd look from different angles. The main difference between the animated turnaround and the model sheet, apart from that one moves, is that the model sheet only requires four drawings. In total, C2's animated turnaround took 8; one front, one back, two sides, and four angled. I did 2 or 3 rough sketches for the turnaround, each with a varying amount of detail before moving onto the most "clean" lineart layer. They were all coloured using the paint bucket tool, making sure to set it on a layer below the lineart, and having the source for colouring being the layer above.

Once I finished my turnaround, I showed it Jon (our lecturer) for feedback and criticism. While it was good, I had some adjustments to make to make sure everything stayed in scale correctly. The fingers and jaw moved a little bit throughout the turnaround, looking like they'd bob up and down when nothing else was. Apart from that, I apparently achieved a good sense of space and shape. With the feedback I recieved, I fixed up C2's turnaround to something I'm really happy with!

To top it all off, I added a little bit of lighting. Nothing extravagant, just some block shading using the same colour as C2's cast model shading.

The next task was the walk cycle. I've found walk cycles quite difficult in the past, but I kept my confidence up when approaching this instead of keeping potential failure in mind. 

I approached the walk cycle with a different plan in mind than what I originally drew on A3; instead of larger strides, I wanted smaller but more powerful steps, to show the weight of the character. To do this, it meant my guide had to have the exaggeration toned down, and having the movements seem closer together. The legs staying the same shape was a little tricky at times, especially with the top of the foot shifting positions sometimes. When I had completed the full 2 steps, something looked... off. I couldn't put my finger on what it was, so I asked for some help from Millie, a guest lecturer. She pointed out that the weight distribution was uneven, where it looked like C2 was limping. Also, the head bobbing didn't quite look right when going through the low stage of the cycle.

This feedback helped me to clean up the walk cycle to a point that I was happy with it. It took a lot of trial and error to get the limp and head bobbing to resolve themselves, but eventually I got there.

The final step was to add arms. I mainly focused on the one arm facing the "camera", and then worried about the other one when I finished the main one; after all, I could just use the front one as a reference of sorts. It was difficult matching the arm to be in the same believable position every frame, since I initially drew it as if the body was static. However, it was using the transform tool that helped me get a better look. Once the arm was how I liked it, I finished up the walk cycle by mirroring the arm to create the second, lesser seen back arm.

The main theme throughout these tasks was "overcoming difficulties". I'd never had someone to guide me with animations before really, and this was the first time someone helped me go in depth with what could be fixed up and improved with my animations. It proved to be VERY helpful, and honestly not as scary as my mind had made it up to be. Definitely going to be asking for professional feedback from lecturers as much as possible in future!