Scarecrow Walks

After I've finally got After Effects I managed to play around with a scarecrow walk to help me understand and explore the tools I could use with him. I know we've done After Effects before hey my last walking sequence was so stiff it looked like my character had a cactus lodged up her backside. So... I explored with creating a puppet and separating the limbs at appropriate joints.

Scarecrow Walk v1


This is a really rough draft. I wanted to see if I could make him lanky and weightless.

Rons' Feedback: The feet look too rigid, give it a pivot point at the ankle to prevent his walk looking too soft and gingerly. 


He's full of hay, since we didn't go with the stick in his body design ;) so we can really look at how flexible he is. Because of lack of limits like humans have, it is easier for him to move around.

Scarecrow Walk v2 (silly)


I thought using the Puppet Tool of After Effects might give a different impression of how he walks. Now I wasn't originally being serious with this walk, I was doing it just for fun, but I did like the beginning section of how he walked. I need another opinion so I dared to show it to Ron ^^;

Rons' Feedback: The main issue with it is the change in volume. Should we choose to use this form of moving the scarecrow we have to make sure we keep the volume the same. The squash and stretch doesn't work. However it does make him look more lightweight and free to move around. 


Like Woody in Toy Story his limbs can do things humans' can't. Ron suggested Breaking Joints. I remembered this from the Richard Williams series we watched on Digital Skills. In both arms and legs, breaking the joints might give a better illusion of more flexibility that working to the rules can't. This is because in theory a scarecrow can do that. The human eye wouldn't think it's wrong because we'll only see how flexible the limbs are.

I've decided to try the walking cycle again, working with both of the feedbacks, and see what I come up with :]