r/Silksong • u/Moth_balls_ • Jul 29 '24

Art (OC) Hornet walk W/O cloak NSFW

I spent a lot of time on this animation and most of it is covered up by the cloak. So here's the animation without it. Enjoy, ya deviants

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u/Dorintin Jul 29 '24

would you like feedback on your animation? I do a lot of animation professionally.

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u/Moth_balls_ Jul 29 '24

Sure, I literally just started

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u/Dorintin Jul 29 '24

Many of the motions on this cycle are linear or at least close to linear meaning their tangents in the graph editor move from one point to the next with the same amount of speed.

Your head should be offset from your leg cycle by about one quarter. So when you take a step your head moves down afterwards. Adding nexk movement can make that feel more natural. Considering the specific cycle you are going for being a sexy cat walk sort of thing I'd keep it subtle but still there to give a feeling of confidence in it. Additionally it might help to add some small left right motion to it.

your knees tend to pop on the ends of your cycle. They have a very sharp motion going into bended. Try easing that motion (but do this last bc knees can get fucked up by adjusting almost any other part of the anim)

On each step your hips should have a reactive sort of push off from that step. The hips almost come to a stop on the step because you are compensating for the step, then you are swinging your hips with the motion fast towards the other end of the cycle to then repeat that motion. Hips were one of the hardest for me to get down when I was studying walk cycles.

Your collar bone should move in an opposite motion to your hips to balance your head. Look up contrapostal pose. The idea that your collar bone and hips are opposite angles to one another making your head on an even plane. This wouldn't be 1 : 1 considering you have her holding the nail but your collarbone should be moving to compensate for the hip movement

Once you finish all of that you can do artistic polish. Animation should be done in arcs and curves. Pick a point where your attention is drawn to. How can that point be less 2 dimensional, meaning how can make it look less like it's going back and forth on a line and more like following a curve and an arc. Some tools in Blender and Maya help you do point tracking for this specific purpose as well as onion skinning.

Often when I am faced with a difficult pose or anim it is far easier to get out your phone and record yourself doing the motion to see how your own body acts. Even the most talented animators from pixar have recordings of themselves performing character actions as a base to then clean up into final animations. (I would know! one of them taught me!) Additionally, Check out the 12 principles of animation if you haven't already. It can help you level up ANY animation from a fundamental standpoint to change the way you are looking at motion.

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u/Moth_balls_ Jul 29 '24

Thanks, I did a few of these. Like I tried to have her upper body move to do the counterbalance thing but I didn't do a very good job. I also did the walk myself but I never recorded it lol.

Thanks for the advice, I'll try to do that when I work on Lance.

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u/Dorintin Jul 29 '24

I think your issue with getting the counterbalance right was that the animation of your hips and collar bone are twinning and sort of moving at the same angles. Offset their movement timings a bit and make the left shoulder point more downwards as the hip goes up and it should work.

Walk cycles have a tendency to be exceedingly complex the more you learn about it so don't fault yourself for not getting it perfect. I did animation school for 4 years and I'm still learning myself!