Scene 07 V11, V12 & V13

Andy gave me some feedback regarding the crow's walk cycle today — he pointed out that it looked a bit weird with the crow's head turned fully away from the camera like that, almost like I'd forgotten to draw the beak! I totally agree with him and it was something I'd kept thinking about all the while I was making it.

He suggested having the crow looking slightly upwards as she entered, so you could still see the beak, then have her turn her head around and downwards. I had a quick go at knocking some alternatives together so have a look and let me know what you think.

I did encounter some slight problems with having her look upwards as she entered. The head kept breaking away from the neck and rotating it so far up caused the head bobbing to look really freakin' weird so I've done my best with it. I'm sure there are things I can do to fix it up, so this is just to give you an idea...

I also did a few versions with her simply facing slightly more towards the camera... which kinda looks a bit better.

V11



This one's recycled — she doesn't look into the air, as said above, she's just got her head turned slightly more towards us.

V12



Slight variation on the above, but with a slightly more turned away head. I think the head looks a bit weird on this one, but I think it's just the crappy way I drew it...!

V13



Mm, I don't know about this one. I had difficulty keeping it properly aligned with the neck — the head's got some position keyframes on it and pushing those forward so that it sits in line with the neck caused it to be a bit jerky. I think it looks a bit peculiar.

I don't really know what to do about it at this stage — I've been staring at it so long I've gone a bit blind!!

I did have another thought — I think maybe I misunderstood Andy — maybe he meant keep using the backwards-facing head but simply attach a beak poking out of it, pointing slightly into the air? I'll give it a go and see how it looks!

Scene 07 V9 — V11

Minor tweaks made to the timing on the heads as the crow enters, trying to sort the problems I thought were occurring in the last version...

Version 9



First, I tried having the crow's head turned away as she entered, then look forward for a bit, before looking to the other side. She then turns to face front.

I think it looks alright but, again, there's a bit too much going on. She doesn't really look like she's looking around, I don't think. I thought it would be better if she turned her head all the way around instead of pausing to look ahead.

Version 10



Still some issues, but I think it works okay. Again, not sure if it feels like she's looking around. There's something weird about her head as well — maybe it's just me, but having it totally face away from the camera like that just doesn't look right to me? Maybe I've just been looking at it too long?!

Version 11



This is pretty much the same as version 7 — her head is only slightly turned away from the camera as she enters, which to me looks a bit better. Maybe she should turn her head forward (towards the end) a little sooner, though?

I think it's quite difficult to make a decision on the head turning so far — once it's put together with the next scene it might really change how it reads. Luckily I've kept all my After Effects files :P

What do you guys think? Any suggestions? :]

Scene 07 V7 & 8

Don't worry, I've not been ignoring any feedback on this scene! Just been doing other things... but here's an amended version. Huzzah!

According to what Jazzy said I tried to have the crow turn her head as she enters the screen, then look the other way towards the centre. She then faces forward as she leaves.

Version 8



To be honest I'm not sure I like the results. I know exactly what Jazzy means and what she wants and it looks fine in my head, but I think the problem is that there's a lot of movement happening in a short space of time, so it doesn't really read? Maybe it's just me? Something about the head turn in the middle looks really off to me.

I did a quick render of the previous version without all the distracting lighting effects as well:



If you watch at full quality you can see that her head is turned away as she enters the screen, then she turns to face the other way near the centre.

I think the biggest problem is actually the beginning. There's not a lot of space to play with as she enters the screen, so the head turn is a bit too quick. Perhaps we could try removing the complete head turn as she enters, and maybe just have her turn her head to face forward towards the end as she exits the screen? It might give the same effect — and I could also alter her expression, as suggested, to look more confused or irritated. Would that work?

Sorry if this makes no sense... my blog posts are getting far less coherent these days :P

Scene 08 V2

Scene 08



Rough version of scene 08. I tried to add a little interest to her top-down walk cycle so that it better matched the previous scene. How's it looking so far?

Again, plenty of tweaks to make. I think her head turns a little too slowly (sorry about that, it was pretty tricky trying to figure out how to get her to do it...!) so I'll perhaps speed that up a bit. I tried to stick to the animatic timings as closely as possible but due to the difference in size on the layers between this one and the original, some things are a little off.

It looks to me as if the hang glider comes in a bit too quickly? I might give it a little longer before it comes in. Maybe slow it down a touch too.

The crow's shrinking pupils aren't terribly noticeable and are a bit messy (very fuzzy when they're at their biggest) but it was just something I was fooling around with. If you guys like the idea I'll clean it up a little :]

Sorry if this post makes no sense... it's early...!

Scene 07 V5

Skipping forward a few versions here — I've played around a little with the timings and whatnot. The crow turns her head a little sooner and spends a bit more time looking in the direction of the camera which I feel works a little better. It's kinda hard to tell at this stage, but I kind of feel like she should carry on walking a bit longer, closer towards the right hand side of the screen? It's hard to say — I imagine it might look a bit different once it's actually put in sequence. Still, I might have her carry on walking, just so we have a bit more time to play with.

The shot is supposed to be 5 seconds long but the crow is actually only on-screen for about 3 - 4 seconds, so I'll simply add in a bit of delay before she actually enters the screen.

Anywho, I've fixed up the head just a little and stopped it breaking away from the body. I also cleaned up the edges a bit and centred the head so it doesn't drift too far away from where the neck should be. I think it's looking a lot better!

The other big change is the addition of lighting effects — it's very simple so far and it looks kinda bad! I made two sets of light beams so that the crow appears to pass in between them, but I want to have them interact with her body a bit more as well as make that shadow a bit more dynamic. I also would like to have some illumination or shadows on the ground cast from the wall of crops but we'll see how we go.

There's also a subtle lens flare to act as a sun that drifts slowly to the right — not sure how noticeable it is. I was also thinking of maybe having some tiny black insects flitting about near the bottom of the screen, just to add a bit more detail. I don't know. What do you guys think? Any suggestions? :]

Scene 07 V2

Mucked around with this one a little more! Started making the crow look around and also added a bit of shadow underneath her to give it a little more depth. Still no tail bobbing though... that will come next!



I had trouble figuring out how to get her to look around. I originally drew a few different heads from different angles and was just going to string them all together, but really they were just keyframes so looked choppy as all hell. Instead I used just a couple of them and applied a quick "directional blur" effect to cover up the choppiness! The result looks alright, but I think it's a bit quick — I originally wanted it a bit slower but it looked really weird when I tried to slow it down. Maybe we can just pass it off as birdishness?! They're pretty 'flitty' after all, not many slow or subtle movements...

Major problems with the puppet's head as well, you may notice — it disconnects from the body and lots of sharp bits poking out from underneath each other. Somehow the head bobbing got knocked out of sync as well towards the end, so her head moves forward at the wrong time! Not sure how that happened, but I'm aiming to fix it up now...

Crow walk cycle V8

Version 8

Finally! It only took me all damn day.

Personally, I think it's looking much, much better. Still problems with the legs and feet — as I said in my earlier post, I need to watch the back foot as it sort of slides forward before it even lifts off the ground. I either need to re-adjust the position of the toes so it doesn't move until it's lifted, or flatten it entirely and have it lift straight off the ground without pushing up onto her toes first.

This wasn't quite as bad a job as I thought it would be. It was a bit tricky initially, but eventually I sort of figured it out. Adjusting the position of the body layer itself screwed up the keyframes on absolutely everything, so to get around that I just created a new composition containing the walk cycle (minus the head, which I would need to animate individually).

The composition "body_walk" contains all the layers and keyframes for the body itself. Placing it within a new composition allowed me to move the crow around freely without messing up the animation. The head layers are left separate so that I could animate it independent of the body.

To attach the head to the body, I created a new "null object" (named "head_pos_control") to act as a control for the head's overall position. The "neck" object is the overall parent of the head and all its features, so by making the null object a parent of the neck I was able to move the whole lot into postion over the body whilst retaining the ability to animate each component individually. 

I then made the null object a child of the body_walk composition. This ensured that as I moved the body across the screen, the head would follow.

To line the feet up, I placed keyframes all along the walk cycle composition corresponding to the keyframes of the animation (contact positions etc.) After Effects lacks an onion skin so I had to sort of invent my own:

By dropping the opacity of the composition, duplicating it and then dragging the new one back on the timeline so that the next keyframe was aligned with the previous keyframe, you get a sort of faux onion skin effect and I was able to line up the feet quite neatly!

It's a bit complicated to explain, so I actually attempted to record my screen whilst I was doing it. Mostly as an experiment (just got a new piece of software I was dying to try out!), but also to save me the time of having to go back and screen shot everything. I'm lazy.

Sorry about the huge watermark... still, it was fun (if a bit weird) to do! Hopefully you guys might find it somewhat helpful?

I'm tired now. BED.

Crow walk cycle V6 & V7

I RETURN. WITH MORE BIRDS. Are you bored of me yet?! :D

After looking at the reference video I posted at the end of the last entry, I made some adjustments to the cycle...

Version 6

I've not yet touched the legs, all I've done is mess with the head a little bit. I think it looks alright, and in terms of the motion I think it could work. Part of the reason I gave up with this one was because of a slight keyframe problem — I don't know why, but I could not get it to loop seamlessly. You'll notice towards the end that the head bobs upwards much faster than it did previously — despite the fact that the start and end points are exactly the same there's a discrepancy with the keyframes somewhere that I simply cannot fix.

Even if I could fix it, though, I'm still not sure on it. It's still not right, to me, and I think it's to do with the fact that she's walking on the spot.  With the way that birds move, unless the crow is moving across the screen I'ms going to have one hell of a time trying to get the bobbing of the head to work. I've also been having concerns that simply tweening the walk cycle across the screen would look weak — if I were to animate her moving across the screen by hand, lining up the feet each time, I think it would ensure a much nicer and more lifelike result. So I just decided to bite the bullet and do it.

Version 7

It's not quite finished at this stage and it's a little difficult to watch, but I think that you can already see that the result is much, much better.

It has flagged up some problems with the animation, though — like I suspected the feet aren't really working properly. As she steps forward the back leg starts to slide forward before it's even lifted off the ground. If I want to keep the foot roll in there, I'll need to manually move it back to ensure it doesn't move until it's lifted off the ground. Alternatively I could attempt flattening out the foot roll and just have it lift straight off the ground, which may serve to give the crow that ungainly, clumsy sort of look!

I'll be back with another massive post fairly soon.

Crow walk cycle V3 — V5

I thought it would be a good idea to refresh myself on birds before attempting the crow's walk cycle again; Jazzy shot some great footage so I spent a bit of time analysing it and trying to break down the body movements.

Looking closely at the movement of the body, you can see that birds really swing their hips when stepping. Curiously, there's not much up and down movement, it's mostly tilting from side to side — their heads actually remain almost completely level as the body moves forward, then they suddenly thrust forward to catch up as the bird lowers its leading leg.

Look at the above clip! Notice how the bird's head is almost completely stationary. 

I also found this much nicer example on Flickr that better illustrates the point:

Image courtesy of Flickr user aaardvaark

The tricky part is trying to incorporate this movement into a fairly limited 2D puppet. One of the first things I noticed is how birds tend to tilt their body forward to follow their hips — my first attempt was to simply try and replicate this movement by rotating the body of the crow. It was hilariously unsuccessful. 

Version 3

Please note I am hideously embarrassed by this.

It just ended up a confusing mess. To be fair it's more to do with the silly way that I keyframed it. There just wasn't enough room between keyframes to have the body point forwards, then back, then forwards again in time with the legs. It just looked like a weird dance. Given enough time and playing around I could probably have  but halfway through trying to fix it I just didn't feel that it was working and so gave up, rather than wasting more time on it.

I briefly considered simply sliding the wing up and down a little bit to try and give the impression of the crow's body tilting from side to side but it didn't really work too well.

For the next attempt I tried to emulate the way that a bird's body sort of shifts forward and backward rather than giving it a lot of up and down movement. I also gave the wing a very tiny amount of rotation to try and give the impression that the body was going more side-to-side than up and down.

Version 4

Disregard the disconnected head for a moment if you will — I was trying something out and unparented the neck from the body. If this motion had been more successful I would have connected it.

This version's looking better but I still was't totally satisfied with it. It certainly could have worked and would have been acceptable, but I just found that it just wasn't "birdlike" enough. It's a bit rhythmic and robotic looking. I also found that the sliding of the body back and forth was a bit distracting — she's walking on the spot, so it didn't really make sense to have it shift back and forth like that.

Version 5

Again, a disconnected head. Taking into account what Sam suggested about an up-and-down body movement I tried replacing the forward and backward motion with an up and down one. I think it looks a lot better — less distracting to look at and it flows quite nicely. I still wasn't entirely pleased, though — the head bob seems a little too exaggerated and I'm not too sure about the legs. Something seems a bit off to me; they animate fairly well, give or take a few glitches, but again, they just don't seem "birdish" enough to me.

I found another interesting reference video; somebody animated a rather lovely walk cycle with an interesting bird rig:

Check out the lovely movement on this one! You can really clearly see the side-to-side motion and how the bird crosses its legs in front of one another. The neck and leg movement are particularly interesting. Obviously it's not a crow, so her head wouldn't move in quite the same way, but the way they've pulled off the head bobbing with an on-the-spot walk cycle is very interesting. Up until now I'd only been pushing it back and forward — it didn't occur to me to try tucking it down and pushing it up as she moved!

It also helped me to identify what seemed to be bothering me about the legs. Notice how the bird doesn't push itself onto its toes at all — the leg is lifted straight off the ground in a wide arc. I think that's the issue with my own cycle — her foot moves in a very human manner. It looks alright and I think I could get away with it but I might like to try tweaking it so that it lifts without the foot rolling.

Crow walk cycle V2 [lower block]

Thought it might be about time to attempt the crow's walk cycle again — spent a couple of hours blocking out the legs and this is the result so far! It's far from complete; there's no body or head movement at all, no weight shifting, no timing adjustments - literally just the legs.



It's horribly robotic and I know that's distracting. Just figured I'd show you the progress so far. How is the leg movement looking so far? Can you see any glaringly obvious errors? Anything that needs changing? Thoughts? Advice? :]

The first thing I want to do once I'm satisfied is sort the timing out. then I can look at offsetting each limb slightly to give it some drag, make sure everything moves accurately. I have nothing more to say. I'm tired!!