This week’s course content focused on Walk Cycle and body weight. The teacher explained the basic structure of walk cycles in class, and also analyzed how body weight is distributed in the hips and legs, as well as its importance in motion performance. My assignment this time was to create a basic weight shift animation, which helped me gain a deeper understanding of how body weight moves and changes in actions.
During the process of making the weight shift animation, I clearly felt the key role of the body weight’s movement path. By continuously observing and adjusting the character’s center of gravity, I realized that whether the body weight’s path is reasonable and smooth directly affects whether the motion looks natural, rhythmic and weighted. Especially when a character moves from one pose to another, the lifting, dropping and forward-backward movement of body weight decide the stability and visual believability of the motion. A proper body weight movement makes the animation look more realistic, while an unreasonable path will make the motion appear stiff or unbalanced.
Besides, I also learned the Pose to Pose animation method with Ting. This helped me master the skills of connecting key poses smoothly. When making the weight shift animation, I first confirmed the body weight position of each key pose, and then adjusted the transitional movements in between. This made the whole motion more fluent and natural in terms of vision and rhythm.