Master Of Animation, Games & Interactivity
Master Of Animation, Games & Interactivity

Aim

My intention for IOL is to make a short animated sequence showing a satisfying fighting scene, so I give this week exercise a chance to explore how to animate kicking movements based on image references.

Method

I used Studio Clip Paint, but bumped into technical issues, so I turned to TV Paint Animation for the rest.

Result

1. This was my first time drawing human movement, thus, the result turns out not as good as I expected. For the first experiment, I used a high kick image as reference to draw the whole body figure. The animation looks bizarre and the positioning is incorrect.

2. To make the movement look stiff, this time, I started to animate a roundhouse kick with line and dot at the beginning, then when the stick man animatic seemed to work, I put on the muscle to the body figure. The result I got was way improved using this technique.

3. I continue to work with the round kick, but this time, instead of just focusing on the positioning and body figure, I also pay attention to speed and timing. The first result with all the images on the same rate makes the character action seem unrealistic. So at some moment where the character accelerates or under momentum impact, I expand the time or speed it up, and turns out, the outcome looks more convincing.

 Discussion

Even though I met some difficulties at the first time trying, It was really fun to explore how to draw kicking movements. I realised that doing one character's movement itself seems already complex , but at the same time, the actions look pretty much unrealistic, so I would spend more time to study and figure out how 2 characters would interact (physically or any aspect that I missed) in a fight to get better.  I hope the animation look technical and lively, so maybe I will try with some references from Live-Action movie scenes. Also, it should be considered as the muscles applied to the stick body would be different for different genders and appearances, thus, it is important (as Nick has advised) to know the characters before getting started.

About This Work

By Bach Pham
Email Bach Pham
Published On: 28/08/2020