Theory of Running. Researching.

Animator's Survival Kit - Richard Williams

- Video reference:

The Running Man by Eadweard Muybridge
This picture below is the sequences photographs of the running man which have 12 images of 2 view sides in front of the white grid on the black background. That's really useful for studied the processes of human motion, revealing action and musculature. 
This photographic sequences produced as apart of Muybridge's Animal Locomotion series.

Other video reference:

Video references

As I work Ozi group project as an animator so I have chose skill to practise in Advance skills unit is animation skill which focus on Run cycle.

So I cut some clips from the movie - The Running Man which I could use for reference.

Basically the group project is called Growing Planet. Here is shots in the film.
The yellow highlights are shots I chose to practice advande skills unit.

SHOTS

3D
1. Ship awkwardly enters the planet
2. Overhead shot of ship on planet floor
3. Ship opens and Amal (means ‘hope’) limps out of the ship
4. Amal walks briefly through the wilderness
5. Amal collapses
6. Turns onto back
7. POV of eyes closing
*DARKNESS* NARRATION BEGINS
2D – All with dreamlike effect
8. Spaceships descend into to the planets sky
9. Amals’ people looking up into the sky in despair
10. Spaceships begin to blast the people down below
11. People run away screaming
12. People get shot/die etc
13. Few remaining of Amals people hop in ships
14. They fly into space
15. They get chased
16. All get blasted
17. Amals ship gets away
18. Amal looks back with tears in eyes – fades out
19. Darkness with last bit of narration
*DARKNESS* NARRATION STOPS
3D
20. POV Eyes open *blurry* little creature in front of his face
21. Blinking as vision becomes more clear
22. Creature taps Amals face
23. Amal jumps up in shock
24. Creature hops back
25. Amal tries to grab creature
26. Creature runs between Amals legs
27. Creature runs away
28. Amals chases creature
29. Creature runs down underground temple steps
30. Amal slips and falls down steps
31. Amal rolls down
32. Lands on temple floor
33. Blue stones enlighten the temple
34. Amal looks around in amazement whiles sat on floor
35. He gets up and dusts self off
36. He notices alit generator at the end of corridor
37. He walks towards it curiously
38. Creature pops head out from behind pillar smiling
39. Amal arrives at generator and looks at it weirdly
40. Shot of weird alien language on dusty generator
41. He dusts of generator
42. Generator lights up even more and makes drone like sound
43. He notices alien language Is now on his had
44. As temple is shaking, armour grows out of the ground

The invaders were originally looking for the growing planet because the growing planet has power. The growing planet is a legend all over the universe and various enemies want its power.

References

Introduction to Maya Animation Walk Cycle 

This tutorial teaches how to create walk cycle in Autodesk Maya. At once I used it as a mode to learn about Maya again.
So that is some notes I sum up from the tutorial:

• Write MEL script to keyframe attributes that you want to in Channel box. That is very helpful to avoid unneeded keys. I could not understand how to write it, just using it as a available tool.
• Graph editor: 
• Get the idea of the movement line,  control keyframe without touching model, fix or delete unneeded keys.
• Give the movement nice and smooth by adjust handles.
• Set up the following through acts by using graph editor...
• Order of keyframe a walk cycle:
• Start from the bottom of body: center gravity -> hip -> feet 
• Upper body: notice of following acts.

 Here are my practice of walk cycle:

Richard Williams Run cycle

Richard Williams' The Animator's Survival Kit is a great book for animator. I have not have opportunity to read it carefully and doing all the practice follow this book, so this time I can focus on Run cycle that is one of the fundamental skill for animator. 

Preston Blair's Walk Cycles 

Advanced Skills - Getting started

For this unit I have to choose skills I would like to improve during the first term. I am pretty stressful for trying to adapt with new school. It a bit different from my FdA course in some ways and I have to catch up with class due to missing the first week. 
Back to the unit I have quite big ambition at first that I not only want to improve animation but also character design, rendering. It is because I have a film idea which I need to research and work with these skills. Nevertheless I understand that I couldn't do all of these in first term so I have to choose one which I would like to work with most.
After some discussion with Dan I have chose to work and research into developing my skills in animation. Base on my concept idea I am going to focus on Running action.