I decided to use the iphone as a prop, constraining it to the ball. I floated it in front of the walker as though held by a Veggietales character, and angled the “head” down as if completely absorbed in the phone. This gave me the idea to add in a little bit of danger for emphasis that this character really is not paying attention at all to his surroundings.
However, everyone I showed it to either could not tell that he was supposed to be holding a phone or were unsure why he didn’t react to the car. To reinforce the idea I added on some headphones and had the phone emit a bright cyan glare. When I showed my partner this updated version he said, “I’m concerned about him”, which was the reaction I was going for. Now that I’d spent some time getting invested in my idea and constraining both props (the iphone and the headphones) it was time to get down to the nitty gritty and focus on smoothing out the small details.
Fix 1: The Toe Dip
The first and most obvious issue was what’s always been the bane of my existence with walk cycles: toes dipping below the ground plane on in-between frames.
As annoying as this is, I’ve found though that it is easily fixed by making the Translate-Y curve between the two points linear:
Sometimes, but rarely, I must go in and adjust the splining to be a little bit faster or slower in relation to the two key frames. Keeping a close eye on the toes, frame by frame, is a meticulous task, but only until those were done could I begin thinking about polishing further.
Fix 2: The Electric Slide
The next thing I wanted to get fixed is the sliding problem:
The walker appears to slide on this step as if on ice.
This is what the Z-Translate curves look like at this point (frames 70-85). I ended up fixing it by dialing down the translation on the offending foot at the passing pose by a lot- from 1 to about 0.2. The result looks like this:
I then went back and did the same to all “passing” poses.
Fix Three: Bend and Snap
Last but not least, I wanted to make sure that the leg movements look smooth and natural, and polish out any twig-like snapping that might be happening. If this happens, it simply means that the knee is going from a bend to a straight position too quickly, and so the answer to this is lowering the heel, easing out the keyframes to be a little less exaggerated, or bending the knee a little bit more.
While I did this I actually went back and decided to slow down the whole second half of the animation while I was at it, because the walker had been traveling noticeably farther/faster towards the end.
The Ultimate Fix: Enlightenment
I went to go move my laundry and found myself paying attention to my walk. Then it occurred to me why I was seeing some of that backwards-foot-sliding motion: once the foot is planted, it stays in that spot, and the rest of the body moves forward around it until it is lifted up. I feel that when I had done my walk cycle originally I’d been stuck in that habit of thinking of it as key poses without understanding how or why the walker must move in that way. I had originally made the mistake of animating the root control, and when I fixed that I still didn’t understand the problem- I had animated the entire walker to move forward at every single keyframe, rather than relying on the forward motion of the leg to carry the rest. That’s why the walker still looked a bit slide-y no matter what I did.
And so I sat down and eagerly redid every single keyframe. This time I studied the channel box editor and keyed the foot control to stay at the same Translate-Z location for the entire time it is on the ground until it lifts up, and I just animated the body and the other foot around that. Here is my graph editor showing the feet staying put throughout the duration that they make contact with the floor:
I found this actually resolved a lot of things- speed, for instance, as the walker is only able to move forward as much as the last step will allow, if that makes sense.
Finishing Touches
Despite reaching this breakthrough that solved most of the surface issues and perhaps fixed the actual mistakes, I still feel that my walk cycle needs work. Most of what’s disappointing me about it is that it feels very stop-motion-y or robotic looking, and I think this is because I made the rotation of the ball/head too predictable and repetitive. Mostly, I felt that the X-Rotation I applied to give the ball a “bobbing its head to the music” feel was not working and instead hurting the realism of my animation. Keeping in mind that “every piece of the animation should always be unique”, I got back to work on the ball.
I think that it may now be just about perfect. I’ve smoothed out the leg animation, added in a couple “head” rotations, and tied it together with the secondary action of the headphones being blown slightly forward by the momentum of the car, still unbeknownst to the walker.
And here’s the render: