Jumping Jahosaphat

And now on the legs! This time 'round we were told to animate this mono-legged rig and make him jump. Specifically we were told to make him do 3 different kinds of jumps, and we were warned not to try to do flips because a bunch of previous students had tried and failed. Logically the first thing I did was include not one, but two different flips in my animation because apparently I'm psychotic and I hate myself!

But this time around he introduced us to a nice little button called an IK/FK Switch that would have been a WONDERFUL THING to have on the last few 3D rigs, because I wouldn't have had to animate everything backwards like I did. The IK/FK changes the way the motion works from having it so the foot leads the motion to having it where the ball leads the motion. On FK, the ball moves everything, and you pose the foot to make sense after that. On IK, the ball and the foot move independently, and while it can cause some issues and is less useful for certain actions, it made THIS animation a million billion times easier than the last 2 I did.


Also, as a side note, I've been approved as a member of the deviantArt film community, so all of my animations are now also available on my dA page here at http://xelioth.deviantart.com