Attached Link: Lucy Walks

Hi

One thing that I have found doing this it don't change your mind.

Plan out what you are going to do and work from the front of the animation to the back.

If you start going back and changing it things start to go wrong.

You don't want to put a break spline every place that makes the animation look jerky and unnatural but you do want to put in a lot of key frames.

I would suggest that you try going to the animation drop down and select Resample Key frames.  Tell it to put a key frame every 15 frames for everything.  I.e. every half second.

Now the arrow buttons on the lower right will move you from key frame to key frame.

Pose your starting frame at frame one, hit the button to move to key frame 2 and pose all the elements of your figure that need to move, then move on to key frame 3 pose it again, etc.  Keep running the animation as you go, to check how it looks.

If you do need to make changes do it at one of your designated key frames and you won't get a lot of weird stuff happing.

You don't always have to do this but I think it will make it easier for you at the start.

Learn how to use the key frame pallet.  if you select one frame and hold Alt you can drag it to a new location as a copy, it you just drag it you move the original frame to a new location.  This make is easy to change the timing of the movements or to return to a previous position.

When you have the figure posed at a key fram, hit Alt, Ctrl, A to record the position, then when you move to the next position hit Ctrl, A to make the figure match the last key frame and then pose from there.

Note that every item on the key frame pallet has a drop down, this lets you change one part to the item through the whole animation, i.e. select Neck, look in the drop down for Twist, and you will be able to make changes that only effet twist etc.

Learn the difference between Spline, Linear and constant selection.

If you are working with a human figure you will use Spline most of the time.

Put in a break spline when your don't want the previous movement to be carried into the following frames.

None of this is the only way to do it kind of thing, eveyone works differently and you will find what works best for you. 

Just keep working with it and it will all make sense in no time.

Oh! and most important, make sure that you save a lot!!!

I usually save multiple saves i.e. Lucy Walks 01, and then later Lucy Walks 02 etc.

If you totally screw it up you have some place to go back to.

I haven't been doing this for a long time either but the things that I've mentioned here are things that I found really helped me.

Mike

PS. and keep trying new things, in the linked video my character is standing still and everything else is moving.  At the end everything else stops and she walks out or the frame.

 

If you shoot a mime, do you need a silencer?