Polar Bear Walk and Run Cycle

To continue practicing some animation basics, I decided to follow some walk and run cycle tutorials using this cartoony bear character!* I started off with the walk cycle, then created the run cycle on an override animation layer. The 'turn and reaction' was on an additive animation layer:

Through this animation exercise I feel that I have become much more familiar with the graph editor, learning how to use the infinity curves, creating nice curves but also learning where best to use linear curves, especially when creating walk cycles:

*Rigged character model created by Gary Welsh.

Squirrel Animation Test

After finding and gathering a small library of free rigs to animate with, I've been brainstorming ideas for short animations including AnimationMentor.com 's Squirrel rig. So in order to familiarize myself with this rig I did a quick animation test of the squirrel doing a hop. I have found this rig to be very user-friendly and fun to use. This little squishy squirrel does make me smile! It's also very similar in principle to animating the legendary "flour sack" - a right of passage I think many animators go through.

What I learned:

• How to switch between global and object controls - this makes animating in arcs so much easier!
• Create a stamp (key all) at each keyframe - this helps to keep everything clean and have no drifting parts if you forget to key a control.

Thumbnail Sketches for a short animation idea involving the squirrels.