Animation Exercises - Critique Welcome

I will post here my attempts at various animation exercises.

I welcome any feedback, especially helping me improve my understanding of animation principles.

I read quite a bit on the subject, watched a few tutorials, looked at a few pages of The Animator’s Survival Kit, and drew a ball bouncing across the page in 2D.
I already had fun moving and posing 3D characters in the viewport, but apart from that, I never really sticked to making an animation, especially one respecting the animation principles.

My first walk cycle :

Any tips on how to avoid knee pop ? It seems even real humans walking have a degree of knee pop when their foot contacts the ground, but it is much softer and subtle

Pose :


Mate, you have zero clue how fantastic of a start you’re putting yourself at here.
The ball is a good way to get used to keyframes and making things feel natural, but your real advantage over everyone else is that you’re learning how to rig the human body first, and you’re paying attention to anatomical structure. I saw the calves in the pose image, that’s a great sign. If you can master the human body over everything else, even before animating, I promise you your animation will be the most compelling ones on the site.

Thank you for your kind words, though I have to say I didn’t model / rig the character, I got it from blendswap :

Doesn’t really matter.

Hey Akrome! So first off I’ll give my thoughts on your ball animation. I like the anticipation before the bounce up, which feels good, and the hangtime is appropriate although varying up the length of time it spends in the air, and what percentage of that time is spent towards the peak of the arc, can alter the whole feel of the animation. Not a critique just something to experiment with as you keep learning :slight_smile: If I were to make any adjustments to the animation I’d say try adding a second and perhaps even third bounce when it returns to the ground, each after bounce smaller than the last. This will add a greater sense of weight as right now it feels like the ball sticks to the ground. As for your walk cycle. it’s got the overall right motion but try varying the timing so that the arms aren’t swinging at the exact same time as the legs. Subtle motions like that add texture to your animation and keep it from seeming robotic.

Thank you for the directions Connor, I’ll be working on these