test - Latest Comments in http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/2008/09/forget-about-animating-legs.html

Re: http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/2008/09/forget-about-animating-legs.html

shawn — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 22:53:00 -0000

I may elaborate on these in a future post, but my quick answers to some of the follow-up questions posted here would be:

1) save keys anywhere you need to in order to make the motion right, but keeping nice curves should be possible as well...

2) I've seen someone animate a dog using the "hide the legs" method, but you're right, that it does seem complicated... I think you'd be fine as long as you did some serious planning, and knew where those legs were going to eventually end up. Try it out for 50 frames or something, and if you hate it, then just forget it. :)

3) as for knowing how high/low to translate the body without seeing the legs - yes, this is something you'll have to kind of "guess" at and probably edit a bit once you show the legs. This is one of the areas I was referring to when I said you'd probably have to edit it a little bit, but you should be pretty close and it shouldn't affect your timing, most likely...

Good luck, everyone! Thanks again for reading!

shawn :)

Re: http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/2008/09/forget-about-animating-legs.html

robsomers@mac.com — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 16:31:00 -0000

This might sound silly, but how do you keep from posing the body too low or too high on the Y-translation when you're not "seeing" what the legs are doing in each pose? I'd be afraid that I would have my main body arcs and curves looking great but end up with legs stretched or squashed in all the wrong places!

Thanks for the great articles, this is a regular stop for me everyday :)

- Rob

Re: http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/2008/09/forget-about-animating-legs.html

Demilliac — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:42:00 -0000

Hello Shawn. Congratulation for this blog, it's an amazing source of knowledge, thank you so much.

I have a question about this particular post. The idea of keeping the leg for a second pass seems really brilliant. So I would like to try it. Soon, I have to manage a dog fight action between two dogs, and it's still hard for me to imagine animating a dog with no leg. Do you consider this method for this kind of shot too ?

Re: http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/2008/09/forget-about-animating-legs.html

Grejotte — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:36:00 -0000

Awesome! At school our teacher taught us to place the feet at first, that was a little weird... I will try to begin with the upper body at my next action shot.

I have a question:
I learned to keep my curves as clean as possible. Like, putting keys only on poses frames and then play with the curves to get the follow through. But then, someone else told me that it's not true, you can put keys everywhere to adjust the animation to get exactly what you want, but then it all gets messy but, you have what you really want. What do you think is the best? Keeping the curves as clean as possible on the main frames? Or take more freedom by adding keys everywhere?

Re: http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/2008/09/forget-about-animating-legs.html

mattanimation — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:20:00 -0000

Awesome! Thanks for elaborating!