the next thing i do is add the down and up poses. these are inbetween the contact and pass poses with the down coming after the first contact to give a feeling of weight. then the up after the passing pose to give a sense of the character pushing foward and up. this is usually the highest of the cycles.

then i add the passing position which basically is the center of a walk cycle. in this case its frame 9. normally its slightly higher than the contact poses.

optimus okx . leading by example. not looking bad at all. like z pointed out the knees should be a bit straighter on the contact poses. as for the hips i'll wait till the arms are in action. one tip however, please when doing previews set the time to cut at the end of the cycle so it will loop well when we view.
anyway i was having a bit of malaria but am much better now and i took the time to do some blocking of my walk cycle. i was going to use step default curve but changed my mind and used the bezier curve default to give me a quicker feedback of my progress.
let me share my walk cycle method. when it comes to walk cycles i use the method i learnt from doing cycles in 2d.
first things first, the first thing i do is create the contact poses. my walk cycle beat is on 16 seconds so that means i just create the first contact pose, turn on auto key and go to frame 17 and create the next contact pose(the opposite of the first)

i totally agree wit okx. how long do we wanna take to animate a guy walking and hitting a pole? one month. i mean the free rigs are there already. truth is you could knock this down in one weekend if u really wanted. even when you work from 8-8. i think i the future as we get better, a straight foward challenge like this should take no more than one week. we dont have to take sfx and editing into consideration at this point just animate!

oh yeah iv seen him before alright. one of those gnomon character animation dvd's.

yeah also i wish i thought of this sooner. but it would be nice if user's of each app use the same rig. i think this one im using is more than enough for any max user in this challenge complete with both fk and ik so u use which ur most comfortable with.  it wud be nice if the maya guys and the other apps can do the same. (so far i can only see max and mayases oops and a poser)it will help in eliminating any distractions and make it easier to judge and critique the animation even for the animation newbies when they come here to critique and might mistake visual appeal for great animation. in fact there is this same rig for maya so i feel it would be better if we all had the same looking character. just follow zpixels link to the 11 second club and u'll find them there. what do you guys think. of course its just a suggestion

hey where's everybody gone? dont tell me you are all neck deep in the animation already. and if thats the case updates and w.i.p's remember? we are here to learn from each other not to surprise anyone ryt? . anyway is there any closing date for the challenge? because initially i was hoping it was a bit more hardcore(modeling,texturing, rigging, animating and rendering just so i can learn more). but its fine to hammer one nail at a time. i just wanted to know because i wanted to do a new rig for the challenge but seems like ready made rigs are the way to go and i dont want to waste my time rigging while others are animating i mean this is about animation after all ryt. well i looked today for a nicely rigged character but most had one thing or the other that i wanted missing in the end i kept getting back to Max, a slightly higer version of lowmax which is a max version of the lowman rig for maya for its simplicity and nice features. im just getting familiar with the dud and he does'nt look like he can cause trouble. at least not when i dont want him to. i am about sketching a rough story board for the animation and camera work and if all goes well i should be animating late today or by tomorrow. below is the Max rig im planning to use. it wud be nice to know what u guys are up to or the rigs u are planning to use. i'll try to upload the story board when im done.

@ okx my email- sagir.carpenter@gmail.com

storyline works for me just fine.

i think we should wait till at least friday .if no one joins, we could at use the week end to kickoff. while we wait we should decide what to animate. hows that

OKX:

besides, this is meant to be a learning experience NOT a competition for the best animation.

exactly why i joined. i just need more practise.

tho v ray is great for architectual stuff. that is not to say its actually better than mental ray. its just easier to use for most people. mental ray is far more advanced(my opinion). v ray is rarely even used in feature animation or movie production rendering.your could even get down to the mr files in your max directory and edit the shader script or even write your own if you are that good the big studios even have scripters that write shaders for them. im not sure v ray will give you that flexibility. however i do believe if you are an architect in his part of the world then v ray could be the render for you as there's tons of resources on line biased to architectual visualization that will give u great render's with far less effort. perhaps with a more time tho

@okx id like to say any form of mocap data or preset or prefabricated animation should be banned. it totally defeats the point of having an animation challenge. if we are to gain anything from this its the only way to go. so yeah im in.

i love it. really great stuff man. i guess this was based on one of your personal life experiences eh lol. keep the fire burning man.

soji we are proud of u. nigeria is flying 

looks fine from here.

AdamuW:

There are many. I suppose it depends how far you want to go. Just do some extensive research.
There's the school of Visual Arts (I think that's the name) in Canada.
Good luck.

yeah its the vancouver film school. highly respected as well. you could check out cgtalk.com. look around there's a thread for this kind of institutions from all parts of the world. exept naija anyway .

i am not preponderantly a v ray guy yet but i think the top rendering engines hav some basics in common and in mental ray i know you cant just bank on copying settings meant for another scene to just any scene because even things like the scale of the models in relation to the scene and lights can make a little to a gargantuan difference to the result. you might get lucky sometimes but yeah like i usually say if you rely on presets then u are certainly preparing your own c.g grave.

zPixel:

Impressive reel. i like the intro&outro . Nice one man.

ditto

thanks i try to have a more rounded brain . trying not to be the proverbial master of none tho 

hi peeps. recently ve been thrown back into the forefront of 2d animation which i previously abandoned to get an extra "Z" dimention in space (3d). anyway like i said m back into it and hav been working in shorts like evcl's nigerians love footbal clip  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcO04YNTsSs and some experiments. came across this picture online

which is actually a picture from the iron giant cartoon showing two key poses. and set about trying to rectreate the inbetween animation. typically drew the initial pose

and used vector point animation as well as actions to create a believable interpolation to the second pose. and finally a white animated masked layer set to overlay to create the light effect on the right side of the character. check it out and tell me what u think.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=384363095205

@ soji. lagassssssss lol

@ ako
there's one part that the guy did not show in his tutorial to feather the edge blend the seam. premier can only do basic cloning. to do a more advanced one u should experiment with dedicated compositing software like combustion or after effects. here's an example of what u could do with after effects. using masking techinques.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmXt6ZTj1TA

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX0kQ0W3lZM
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ok man no problem its all good keep up the good work

ha c.g king! . i swear i started wonderin if something happened to you. what a time off the forum. you still hunting for vray? . dud its like exactly a year since u first asked me where to get it. anyway best of luck.
nwfx pretty nice work. was desperate to get my hands on cat for max once and did'nt. . how ever im now glad i didnt then because i would'nt have learnt some of the rigging techniques i do now by creating a similar set'up from scratch which is quite helpful    in rigging not just heads but anything in general.

yes o, its been a long time comming z. i enjoyed workin with you guys on this project as a character modeler and texture artist especially on my main guy. goateeee! . buzz me anytime on freelance for more pls.

actually pidgeon impossible took 5 years and had nearly 100 people who worked on it including musicians for the score of course. yep! it aint easy man.

just to add a bit to what adamu already said the texture desicion was made after the character setup was done. the coat was originally meant to have normal 2d vector money signs on it.it was unfortunately done in a way that would mean the money bitmap texture would either look distractingly stretchy in some parts or the character to be rigged again. might not look it but these guys have advanced bone dynamics with vector point weighting, foward and inverse kinematic features, bone orientation constraints and rotation limiters (a new name for 2d set up's like these in now actually 2.5 d character rigging)that would have added time required to finish it. we were experimentint with project deadlines as well on this one and in the end the disicion was made to have it not deform with the suit.

hmm mr spy some wud call this copyright infringement o .

incredible resolve lafem. dont worry our grand kids shall know of the father of nigerian 2d animation

suddenly the smiling dude behind him shouts."hey that ex governor(or minister or even counclilor of late ) Bleep" and the frowning ladies    suddenly invert their expressions  ( and then    ) swarm over him like bees to nectar!

i did see one on the e billboards in abj for a while now but seems kinda different 2 the one u talking bout cuz there's no hip hop dancers on this one jus a 3d animation of some three cartoon style characters (two guys and a chick fooling around.)

one more thing shadowmay. those triangles or three sided polygons your making spell doom for an organic model like a face. three sided polygons dont smooth well and cause pinches and streches which is what uv got on the face of your model. try to avoid them at all costs  and use them only in areas that are sort of flat and wont be deformed or animated. try to always use four sided polygons when modeling because it smooth's out well.
www.nairaland.com/attachments/186258_Untitled1_jpga2336ed1c2cc707a7d464a3906810725
as z pix stated try to follow muscle flow and giv your model good loops as u can see on the image below the flow
should radiate from the eyes, mouth and nose and ears. your flows are obviously streching the polygons in a perspective
style and your three sided polys are'nt doing a good job at hiding it.

keep practising and goodluck