stealthy walk animation [WIP]

[Coltrane]

I try to make this rat character walk in a kind of stealthy/on the fingers way. I'm not really satisfied with the result but i don't know what's wrong. Could you help me ?

OLD :




NEW :

[Pix3M]

Maybe we started on the wrong foot with a pose that doesn't quite communicate something that you might want?

[r1k]

animators survival kit has some pages on doing a sneaky walk.  Heres some scans I found on google:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KhZILDlLCto/T4AF31vSnyI/AAAAAAAABOQ/wJvDKweYBXc/s1600/r-williams-sneak-2.png
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IRHWY0F0t0Q/T4AF7JdigTI/AAAAAAAABOY/zoorOEceFGc/s1600/r-williams-sneak-3.png
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rbIH0OoFBZQ/T4AGCwImm_I/AAAAAAAABOo/hqzUPtMG-DQ/s1600/r-williams-sneak-5.png

also, heres a short animation on youtube showing a sneaky walk you can reference

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iFeA8lX988

[Coltrane]

Thanks guys.
i made another attempt with the examples provided by r1k. Not enough frames yet but i think it's better.
There are two things that bother me :
- I'm sure the tail change the weight balance of the body so maybe these examples with a human being don't work for a creature with a tail… don't know.
- I watched this video and it seems realistic sneak is not similar at all to the cartoonish one : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGLXCT3zwpQ
(and also : what do you think about the "skyrim" sneak walk ?)

[Pix3M]

I think it depends on how stylized you intend the art style to be. I definitely thought of the Skyrim sneak walk and forgotten about the super-cartoony sneak. The cartoony sneak is exaggerated and gets the point across. A more realistic sneak might not carry the point across as loudly, I think.

[Coltrane]

I'm going to take the stylized direction. The Skyrim sneak is a bit boring.
Here is the latest animation, looks better but still a WIP.


and the update to the latest one :

[Conzeit]

SQUASH AND STRETCH man. exagerate every pose to the most ridiculous degree. see how your torso there has the same width and height on all frames? that's not enough for a cartoony walk.

also, hold the ridiculous pose where he's making contact on the floor a lot more. make it akwward, make it look awkward for the rat to do that, make us pity him. FEEL awkward while drawing it if you can

here's my rushed edit  after some fiddling, just dragging and dropping stuff, mostly extended that awkward contact phase I told ya :p. you can push it more, read up on that survival kit and really feel the rat's awkwardness (just guessing...he's sneaking by a cat right?)

have you guys ever tried going to ggale's options/tools and unchecking "not erease image under selection"? I find it makes stuff like this a bazillion times easier and cleaner.

BTW, what I did was exagerating the motions you had in there, you're doing great laying out all the animation =)

[Coltrane]

Thanks Conceit for your comments and the edit. I was trying too hard to respect the proportions so exagerate them was totally out of my mind but you were right about this.



As for ggale, i don't know... i work on photoshop because i'm so used to it it's hard to change (and i'm on mac). And it's possible to keep layers under the one you're working on (but i think everybody knows that).

One more frame and some corrections :

[Conzeit]

that looks very good coltrane  . I'm glad I helped you break that boundary,  just keep that kind of energy for everything else. Just keep on reading the survival kit, and maybe when you want to look at an example of an action with this kinda energy watch some tex avery (Droopy and the wolf), some robert clampett , chuck jones (looney toons) some John Kricfalusi (Ren&stimpy) they all have this kind of energy.
johnkstuff.blogpost.com is the blog of John K if you want to check out more expert advice on cartoony anims

I was sort of rusty with my animation and watching some great stuff and frame stepping to it to try and do the same worked for me, so...yeah I'm just trying not to put you on a place where you got one good looking anim and you dont know how to keep up that level :p