Month: January 2026

For this assignment, we had to animate a full-body mechanic, so I started by searching for reference material to study realistic movement. I decided to take on a fairly challenging animation, which pushed me to think more carefully about body weight and motion. During the process, we realized it worked better to keep the character’s body attached to the cube, so the hands would stay grounded and consistent throughout the animation.

After switching the animation fully to spline, I ran into some challenges. I’m still having quite a bit of trouble with my character sliding instead of staying grounded, which makes the movement feel less natural than intended.

I created a blocked and stepped animation for my ultimate walker, but I’m still having some difficulties fully understanding this workflow. While it helps to focus on poses and timing, I sometimes struggle to see how everything will translate into a smooth final animation. It’s something I’ll need more practice with to really get comfortable.

This week was mainly about planning and gathering references. Since drawing isn’t really my strong point, working with visual references feels like a much more effective way for me. Using references made the process clearer and helped me stay focused while planning the next steps of my walking ball.

Before animating, I studied the key walk poses: contact, down, passing, and up. Planning these poses helped me understand how weight shifts from one leg to the other and how the hips move in relation to the legs. I also checked the motion in front view to make sure the hip movement felt balanced and believable.

This task reinforced the importance of clear structure and weight transfer in walk cycles. Focusing on blocking and strong key poses made the motion easier to read and provided a solid foundation to build on in later animation passes.

This week’s assignment focused on planning a basic walk cycle, with the aim of creating two full cycles over 48–50 frames. The animation was limited to side view and blocking only, with the walk translating from left to right across the screen, rather than walking on the spot.

This week’s task was to plan and animate a ball with a tail, focusing on clear planning and simple motion before adding complexity. The animation was restricted to side view only, blocking only, and a 100-frame limit at 24fps, which helped keep the focus on fundamentals.

I began by sketching the motion path of the ball and then planning how the tail would follow and overlap the main body. Looking at reference, such as squirrels, helped me understand the relationship between the body and tail, especially how the tail drags behind and catches up after direction changes. I planned areas where the tail would stretch, squash, and overlap to enhance the sense of weight and flexibility.

This exercise reinforced the importance of secondary motion, timing, and overlap. Keeping the animation simple allowed me to focus on clarity and strong motion, rather than detail, and helped me better understand how tails and similar appendages should behave in animation.

I need to make sure the tail reacts correctly to the movement of the ball instead of moving at the same time or in the wrong direction. The tail should always lag behind the ball, clearly showing overlap and follow-through, so it feels attached and affected by the ball’s motion.

I also need to adjust the direction and timing of the tail, making sure it consistently trails opposite to the direction of movement and only swings wider when there is enough speed or impact. Right now, the tail movement feels too independent, which makes the motion less believable.

Finally, I need to refine the tail’s settling after the landing. The ball should come to rest first, while the tail continues to move and gradually settles, creating a clearer sense of weight and physics.

Final realisation of the pendulum challenge:

This week’s task was to plan and animate a simple pendulum motion, keeping the movement side-to-side only, in side profile, within a 100-frame limit. The focus was on planning the timing clearly before animating in Maya.

I planned the pendulum by drawing key positions across the timeline, marking important frames where the pendulum reaches each extreme and passes through the centre. The spacing between drawings changes to show how the pendulum moves faster through the middle and slows down at the ends. I noted that longer spacing means more frames, which helped me visualise timing and rhythm more clearly.

This exercise helped reinforce the importance of planning motion paths and timing before animating. Keeping the shot simple made it easier to focus on weight, flow, and realistic movement, which I can now apply when animating the pendulum in Maya.

I need to focus more on creating clear C-shapes and S-shapes in the motion.

The small ball should always follow the top part of the pendulum, not move ahead of it, otherwise the motion feels illogical.

The top section must always lead the movement, with the rest of the pendulum following afterwards. The secondary parts should never be positioned ahead of the leading part, as this breaks the sense of physical logic and weight.

Feedback of the bouncing ball (Week1)

I need to clearly define the arcs of the movement. Each bounce should have a smaller arc and a shorter gap than the previous one, as they are currently too large or remain the same size.

I also need to use the motion trail correctly, making sure it matches exactly what is shown in the Graph Editor, so the motion reads clearly and consistently.