DAY 6: Innocent bystander scene reshot, considering different walk cycles

I wasn't happy with my first attempt at the innocent bystander scene. After getting really mad and throwing my camera across the room after I bumped it and then trying to reconstruct the base since it flew apart, I got the scene refilmed with better physics on the bike crash. It still looks slightly weird, but I don't think I can get it any better. Oh well. I'll probably be building the interior police car set tomorrow and start filming by at least Tuesday. After that will be a few more shots for Scene 1 and then I'll finally be done with it and probably the most difficult animation will be finished. Hopefully that will be by the end of this week.

I'm also testing out some different walk cycles to see how they look onscreen. Ever since Crazyanimator posted his 8-step walk cycle and it looked like some guy creeping around on his tip-toes (no offense to Crazyanimator), I've been thinking that perhaps even Nos's 6-step walk cycle is slightly unrealistic. The main problem with minifig walk cycles is the movement between these two steps:



No matter what you do, there is no way to have an intermediate movement between these two steps. In Nos's 6-step walk cycle it is not very obvious, but in Crazyanimator's 8-step walk cycle it is apparent that the other steps that the minifig takes need to equal the size of the aforementioned. When the movements become smaller and smaller in comparison to this one, it looks more and more like the minifig is popping his heels back like he's about to kick a ball. Also, the more frames it takes to take one step, the slower the walking becomes and also adds to the unrealisticality (if that's a word). So, I've figured that a four-step walk cycle is more accurate in terms of equalness of movement in the legs. It may not be the smoothest animation-wise, but at least it's more realistic overall. I may post a test clip tomorrow to show what I mean.