Like yourself, I wanted to get into animation, and the first animation I did was a walkcycle. Why? Because that’s what the tutorial taught. Anyway, I did a couple more animations for the Blender Animation Challenge, (BAC) here on the forum. It was a member ran contest, like the weekend challenge, but was for animation. I even won one of them, but to be honest, at that point in time, interest & participation in the challenges was dropping off. It’s easy to win when there’s no one to compete with…
I entered the 11 second club monthly animation contest a few times, and always did poorly at it. I always posted on their forum my WIP, and posted it here. Got good feedback over there, not so much here, During the voting period, you can leave feedback on the clips you vote for. Some comments on my work was that I needed to get the basics down better.
Animation is easy, but good animation requires a bit of work. I just wanted to animate a character and didn’t want to waste my time learning how to make bouncing ball animation. Animating a ball bouncing is easy, right? Why would I want to do that?
Well, last time I played with animation, I was doing bouncing ball exercises. And I’ve learned some things along the way. So don’t put off the basics, like a walkcycle.
If you want to do a walkcycle where the character walks forward, you need IK legs. If it’s walking in place, like on a treadmill, you don’t need IK on the legs.
I think a walkcycle is a great place to start, it’s basic.
Here’s the best animation I’ve done: http://vimeo.com/117460959
And I’m learning how to make balls bounce…
Start simple… and have fun with it…
Randy