Walk Cycle

I'm working through Idleworm's tutorial on how to animate a walk cycle. At first, I was going to do an Arrietty walk cycle, but Cornell wanted a very simple character, so simple it shall be. I'm using Idleworm's basic character.

I'm sorry I don't have any images for you today. I've finished the first contact pose (frame 1) and now I'm working on the seventh frame, or the second contact pose. It's difficult to reverse the sizing on the legs, but that's about all I have to say for it at the moment. I'll work it out.

Apophysis

Apophysis is a program for creating fractal flames, similar to FLAM3. It's free to download and relatively simple to use -- it's possible create interesting compositions without much knowledge of the program or the mathematical concepts behind it.

The program is based on fractals. A fractal is a geometric shape that's very complex and often appears in nature. Fractals are typically self similar, meaning (in simple terms) that they can be constructed out of infinite quantities of smaller versions of themselves. I've been looking around, and I've discovered that it has something to do with the concept that if one were to continually decrease the unit of measurement on a jagged object, the object would be infinitely large (The Coastline Paradox.) Some common examples of fractals include the Sirpinski Triangle and Koch's Snowflake. . Fractals can have fractional dimension... a concept which I'm still working to understand..but instead of being 1D or 2D or even 3D... they can have non integral dimensions, if fractal dimension is defined as the "log of the number of self similar pieces divided by the log of the magnification factor" (taken from http://math.bu.edu/DYSYS/chaos-game/node6.html#SECTION0006000000000000000)
 ... If you want to understand the math better, I'd suggest you go hunting yourself. It's difficult to teach about a topic I don't nearly grasp myself.

Apohysis crates, as I stated above, fractal flames. Fractal flames are a type of iterated function system (IFS.) An IFS is a fractal constructed by the combination of several copies of itself, the Sierpinski Triangle being an example. (Wait a second... then what makes it necessary to call an iterated function system an iterated function system and not a fractal? No clue. Fractal flames differ from normal iterated function systems, all though the information as to how they do so does not yet make sense to me, so I won't share it with you. You can look on your own. The Wikipedia page on fractal flames has fantastic information about the mathematics behind the functions used in the program.

Apohysis then, is a fractal editor.

This is the Editor box in the program. As you can see, it's based off of triangles which you can modify- position, dimensions, rotation, etc. You can add triangles and delete them, too. That in turn influences the flame. Under name, you have several options you can apply to your flame, from items like swirl and spherical to gaussian blur. I suppose that perhaps these are shapes and photoshop-esque filters you can apply to the appearance of your flame, but I haven't experimented with the program enough to know exactly what they do. You can influence the values of each of these options as well.

This is the adjustment window. In gradient, you can influence color scheme. Brightness, in the flame above, seemed to influence the brightness at the center, which in turn radiated outward. Vibrancy, on the other hand, seemed to influence the brightness of each individual pixel of the flame. Gamma seems to influence the concentration of the pixels. When brought up, the pixels spread out. When brought down, they concentrate towards a center.

The program also provides a set of mutations you can apply to the flame as you progress through its creation.

It's difficult to apply constraints to the program, or define exactly what it does. It's something you play with, and things turn out.

The program is used for making things like nebuli... or is it nebulas? I'm not sure. It's also used for artwork. ElectricSheep uses it to make screen savers

I encourage you to try it!!!

Wow, what a post! Took me a while!

Have fun!

-Yume

First Ever Walk Cycle- Complete!

Tada! A primitive walk cycle created from the references at http://www.angryanimator.com/word/ and http://www.idleworm.com/how/anm/02w/walk1.shtml. The image I used to create this is not my own. I simply chopped up his reference: 

This reference lacks the in-between poses that would be needed for a final project, but that's okay. I'm just using this to figure out how things would work if I were to create an actual walk cycle. The next step will be to finish reading through his tutorial and start drawing. I think I need at least two more poses between each position. I wonder if it would help to do this on tracing paper? Probably- in order for the walk cycle to work, the character needs to remain consistent, which is something I struggle with. I'd need to do a character study to make sure it remains consistent.

But... this is a start!~

-Yume

Walk Cycle

Hello!

Today I'm working on a walk cycle. I took the reference image from http://www.idleworm.com/how/anm/02w/walk1.shtml, and am now cutting it apart to create a layer with each piece. The difficult part is that the steps overlap, and so I have to edit each piece a bit to make it fit with the others, make them the same size, and get rid of the overlap from the previous frame. Still, I'm having  a lot of fun figuring this out!! I'll go home and get the lightsaber reference images later, I don't want to let that project fall, but I do want to get this one done.

This is exciting!

-Yume

Lighting GIF

Today I made my first gif. Aren't you proud of me? It's pretty and the text is minty. Anyways, I went and re-took all my lighting images to make them lovely and subdivided and generally pretty. I think they look all right. I also helped a lot of people today. It's difficult explaining technology (which has its own language) to people who speak a different language than English to start out with. Hum dee dum dum dum dum. I think I helped a little, but I'd have to sit with them for a whole class period and go through everything with them in order for them to get it.

It must be difficult being a teacher.

-Yume