3d Walk

For this I decided to go for a wealthy looking character with a happy confident stride. For reference I looked at a photo I took in Canary Wharf, London of some rich looking businessmen striding through a shopping mall. From these I made some thumbnail sketches.







Following these sketches I blocked in the key poses in Maya. I went through them all several times adding further keyframes for arcs of movement.



It needs a good extra dose of life which would probably require me spending
more time in the graph editor injecting a bit more acceleration/decceleration
in places and altering the key frames of various body parts to make it a bit
more natural and flowing.

I think the key is to not land everything all on the same key frame as this looks too robotic/mechanical (I have been reading Keith Langos article - very informative and helpful.) I have tried to do this to some extent - the hands holding a couple of frames longer before swinging down, the head rotating in its own time. At the moment its a bit gloopy so more practice with the dopesheet and graph editor required...