Very little formal qualities here, basic timing, just a stick figure with pod hands. Just going for a "feel" of moving the limps and springing in a good way. I saved into GIF and ImageReady controls the speed, so it might be a bit off but if it's slower then I suppose that's all the better for analysis, eh?
Looking pretty good for an early jump test. At first I thought you animated him doing a kinda round house jump kick kinda thing. :D First thing I thought was that yes, there is too much arm/hand movement going on, and second, the head arc is kinda messed up. I did a quick little head plot and arc over your animation so you can see it alittle better. I hope you don't mind.
What also might help is to give him alittle anticipation befor he squats down, and then to have him stand up at the end too, to finish the motion. Keep plugging away.
Aloha,
the Ape
p.s. are you using the onion skin function in Flash when you animate?
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
For continuity doing the stationary (or rather pre- and post- jump) keys would be a good idea, yah.
The arc business is a very astute observation. I wasn't even thinking about it. I'm trying to learn all of this cumulatively, and I finally got a free couple minutes so I thought I'd pound something out. I will definitely keep working on it. I have a walk cycle that I did that I'll probably post later in here. It's not terribly exciting, another mechanics test, but it's one of the first ones where the sizes and proportions stay sane, and the "hard" edges of linedom are gone, leaving something smooth and organic in its place. In other words, it seems more like a successfully animated being than a moving jumble of lines/scribbles.
Thanks again for the insight AA.
Any time Scattered. The best way to do complicated movements is to boil it down to the simplest ellements. Think of the characters head and hips as to seperate balls that are attatched by a string. Then think of them in a ball bounce exercise. Plot each of their arcs and then have them follow their own arcs.
You should post the walk cycle too. Those are something that are deceptively simple. It's easy to do a walk, but to get a characters personality and emotional state across is rather hard. But you need to know the basics first. And walks are something that, as an animator, you will have to animate all the time. Remember, head and hips = bouncing ball.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
Duly noted. If I get some more time tonight I'll come back and post the walk. I am getting down the technical aspects, like I said, so this thing has about as much personality as comes standard lol
Most of my time in the next week is finishing up my duties with a site that's sort of the collective organized web version of the concept that Hett15's doing on the FAQ, albeit started way long ago. I'm thinking about posting an open call for the user-editable animation encyclopedia, but I'm debating whether to let people write from the ground up or give some articles to start from so they can add/delete/modify and also see how it's formatted. An animation-student only version of wikipedia.org. Same engine actually. Anyhow way off-topic, you'll be seeing the walk cycle as soon as I can get it up.
Oh, and the revised jump. I did the limbs in separate colors so it didn't come off so flat and messy.
From watching the old animation the timing seems to be too slow, like someone was saying earlier animate using shapes. The characters timing all the way through is pretty much the same, maybe get rid of some frames when the jump is coming down, and stretch the character.
http://freetoon.com/ preston blair has some pretty cool stuff on his site that might help
The timing of the jump looks good from what I can see. I would suggest fixing the right arm, as it seems to be popping all over the place. Other than the right arm, you have a good start for an animated jump.
________
n02 vaporizer
Agreed. Had I put an actual character on this skeleton of a thing, it might be easier to distinguish, but because his hands are identical and clack together at the top, it looks like a flurry! Too much action and not enough frames/time makes it look...er...Scattered.
The relative timing is there, I think, too. Not all the way. But in the absolute sense, I have to really find a way to save GIFs straight out of Flash and get good file sizes (and maybe cropping too!). ImageReady really grinds things down. Thanks for your time and commentary.