I wish I had the fearless attitude of this li’l t-rex. Although, it’d be nice to have some foresight too.

When watching Kiki’s Delivery Service awhile back, I fell in love with this one part near the end of the movie where Kiki is running and as she turns the corner, she slips on a leaf and stumbles before regaining her footing. It’s such a small detail, but it makes such a difference.

Watching this along with seeing stuff in Drake’s Fortune inspired me to try doing a bit of physical animation where my character will run, stumble a bit, pick up his footing, then jump and scramble up the side of the wall. Above are reference thumbnails taken from Kiki and from a parkour video I saw on Youtube. The jump thumbnails read right to left because it was easier for reading the movement based on the reference footage.

Here’s the finished product. Of course, I’ll probably keep tweaking. Any crits are welcome!

I learned a lot doing this animation test, particularly about workflow and using the Max rig by Peter Starostin. Animating strictly with IK hands was an interesting challenge, but it does make things easier if you want to visualize arcs and adjust torso movement without affecting the hand positions. I’m not quite sure if I’d use it for a walk cycle, but for acting it does have its merits.

Anyway, I’m off to start my next animation which will be a physical test using my character, Asher. I’ll put up the planning/blocking as I go.

Added more smoothing to the rest of the clip. There’s still some rough spots, but I intend on going through them as I start adding facial and finger movement this upcoming week. I tried to follow the crits from last post; lemme know if I’m on the right track. Thanks again for all the advice!