Scene 11 V20 — V23

Hello guys and girls and chaps and chappettes, been smashing away at the chase scene. Andy suggested adding some slight rotation/wobble to the body to give it a little more life — similar to what we had in the original animatic! It took a while to figure it out but I finally managed to come up with something:

Version 20



No head or anything as yet, as I wanted to ensure the body was looking good without any distractions... I think it's getting there, most definitely, and adding the wobble really does improve the whole thing.

The next challenge was the head. I asked Andy for some advice on what it should be doing and he suggested having it slightly follow the orientation of the body but delay it slightly, by just a few frames — so that as it rotates one way the head is just slightly lagging behind. It's quite tricky to accomplish in such a short amount of frames but I'm going to keep playing around with it.

We spent a fairly frustrating afternoon trying to figure out exactly what the head should be doing — we tried about a million different things but only a few of them seemed weren't too painful to look at. We've still not reached a decision on the head so I'm posting up a few of the ones we came up with so you guys can examine them in your own time and see if you can come up with any ideas...

Version 21



In this first version there was no rotation or anything applied to the head — simply an up/down forward/backward sort of bobbing going on. I thought it might be an idea to try and get an idea of the vertical movement before worrying too much about any rotations and such — proving to be trickier than I thought. It's quite difficult to figure out how the head should be moving in this scene. In an ordinary walk cycle a bird's head is kept mostly still, mostly level, until the body moves ahead and the head thrusts to catch up as the bird steps down. This is quite tricky to achieve in this sort of cycle... obviously the movement of the legs is a little different, and it's hard to figure out whether the head would stay level or should be pushed up/down by the body. Here we've just got it opposing the body — travelling downwards as the body rises and then moving upwards as the body drops (effectively keeping it level). The head bobs forward as the body is at the highest point. I'm not sure if it really makes any sense? Perhaps it will look better if we can figure out the rotation?

Version 22



This one's pretty much the opposite of the above version — the head bobs forward and moves down as the feet go down, more like in a conventional bird walk cycle. I think it looks, er... really weird though. Doesn't seem to work. At all.

Version 23



Here, on version 22, I've tried applying Andy's suggestion (with a slight alteration) — I copied the rotation of the body but rather than shifting it to the right, I simply reversed the rotation of the head. Unfortunately I don't know if the exact rotation will work with the head — it gives it this weird sort of round and round motion. Just looks a bit peculiar.

I don't know. I think the problem, as we identified earlier, is that the head is a little too... mechanical. The body, legs and feet are all moving continuously in quite a rapid, frantic motion and in contrast the head is quite controlled and steady. It's just difficult trying to figure out exactly what to do with it.

It's a tricky one, to be sure. If you guys have any suggestions or ideas of your own please let me know! :]