More test animations

Here are some more test animations, showing the facial expressions as featured in my previous blog entry.

Firstly, the happy face:




And here's the other test animation I made, which is of Ste running. I previously attempted to use bones to animate his body, but that was difficult to master, so instead I've just adjusted the pivot points of a secondary pair of legs I made for him, and used key frames to animate the legs.




The legs are both moving at the same speed as each other, so they create a motion blur for a humourous effect.

But wait... what exactly did I mean by a secondary pair of legs?

Basically, the legs of the original character model are one solid object, which I initially hoped to animate using the 3DS Max bones. As previously stated, I had difficulty learning to use that function, so instead I replaced the legs with a pair of cylinders and adjusted the pivot points, making them easier to animate. Here's some screengrabs showing his two different pairs of legs:



The first pair of legs is (are?) used when his legs are not moving, for example, when he stands still for most of the first ident. The second pair is used when I need to make them move, like in the above test animation.