Spiderman Weight Shift Exercise

The video is my Spiderman Weight Shift Exercise that I have done. In my animation, I have to add in anticipation, follow-through, secondary action and overshoot.

I feel that by adding those 4 principles of animation, I have made the animation more realistic and more interesting to watch. I used the weight shift video as my guide but added by own style into the animation to make it more unique.

The anticipation is where the hip moves quickly to the right before the weight is shifted to the left. This tells the audience that the hips are going to move to the left.

Follow-through happened after the weight has been shifted to the left. Even though the body stops moving, the hips continue to move to the left.

Secondary action is the legs of the character. While the hips are moving, the legs are rotated accordingly by using the knee joint control. This gives a more realistic movement of the hips because the legs are connected to the hips and should move with it.

Overshoot happens after the weight has been shifted to the left leg. The hips overshoots the stopping point but returns back to the position. This gives the impression of the hips settling down after moving.

In order to make a more realistic motion of the hips, I had to use the x, y and z of translation and rotation. In translation, I used the z to have the hips move back and forward while the hips were moving. The y is used to make a u-shaped path for the hips. Rotation is the most important as it tells that the hips shifted the weight from the right leg to the left leg.

1 of the problems that I face was using the graph to adjust the speed and motion of the hips. I have to time all 3 axis or else the timing of the animation will be off. By using the graph, I was able to improve the animation rather than depending on the key poses and location of the set keys.

From this exercise, I have learned to apply the different principles of animation. Even though the animation principles are separate, some of them come naturally together. I have also learned to break down the animating process into simpler steps in order to create the animation better rather than doing it by trial and error and redoing the animation over and over again.