I tried to animate an angry walk cycle, but was only marginally successful. It came out looking more determined than angry (although those two can be related).
I really want critiques on this to help me figure out what went wrong. I would put this in the focused critique section except I don’t really consider this good enough.
Anyway, here it is: angry_ball_walk.mp4 402KB MPEG-4
Please tear it apart. I can do additional renders without the props and lighting if people would find it helpful.
Yes,it seems more determined than angry,but it’s not so bad,maybe you should try to make it a bit slower,to give it some more power.
I tried slowing it down.
www.cessen.com/storage/temp/angry_ball_walk_rev_1.mp4 749KB MPEG-4
Still doesn’t seem “angry”. I think it must be something in the poses.
How does one make an angry pose with a ball and legs?
Lacking seperate head- and body- movements might make it a bit more difficult to get certain expressions indeed, though it already works quite well. Maybe add some more armswing is just a suggestion which I am not sure will work… Also making the ball look more to the ground could take away a bit of the determined look and make it more angry? But honestly I can’t give any good solutions, just tweak and tweak is how I would do it… 
Edit: One maybe more usefull idea from my side is to do a search on the internet for angry walk movies (animated and real one’s) and study those. For example this animation is not too bad: http://www.lluisllobera.net/ANIMATIONS/ROB/ROB_003.avi
It’s not bad at all. Yes you’re right more of a stomp than a walk. It’s a little bit dark, but it looks like you’re lifting the feet really high then transfering the weight. The transfer of weight should occur when the feet are passing under you.
George Maestri has a good walk tutorial at http://www.rubberbug.com/tutorials.htm This is the complete tutorial as found in his book.
Frame 1, Left foot forward, Right foot back.Position hips halfway between feet, rotate Left hip slightly forward and rotate shoulder spine by the same number of degrees, but in opposite direction. Now lower hips a bit, so knees are slightly bent. Enter keyframe.
Frame 8, the passing mode. Move hips forward until they are directly over left foot/ankle. Extend left leg so that it’s nearly straight vertically. Rotate hips back to straight/ zero position. Enter keyframe.
Frame 8, Right leg. Move Right ankle so that it’s directly above Left ankle and slightly below Left knee. Enter Keyframe.
Frame 8, Rotate shoulder spine from the top view, so they are straight with hips when viewed from above. From front view, rotate shoulder spine so that it mirrors hips.
Go back to frame 4- the recoil position. Move the hips down a bit, Enter keyframe.
Also at Frame 4, Rotate Right foot slightly down, Enter Keyframe.
More Tweaking, back to frame 8, Front view. Rotate hips slightly to the right. And now move the hips slightly to the left, so center of hips are nearly over the left foot. Enter Keyframe.
That’s the half the walk cycle, to do the rest of the walk cycle simply copy each pose into buffer and paste back in flipped/mirrored pose. Good Luck! 
I like it. Like you say determined and angry are the same thing sometimes. I like the faster version. The eye expresion says a lot.
At the moment it’s just a couple of legs walking. Break up the walk a little with other body gestures - body (eye!) rotating up wards to mimic eyes rolling to back of head, body shaking from side to side as in head shaking, pause squat down and bang forehead (foreeye?!) on the ground (as there is no wall at hand), some jumping up and down on the spot … zigzag the walk a little with brief gesture pauses. If you want a straight line then I think determined is what you want. Could also use the knife a little to give the impression of arm expressions.
Try scripting what’s going through the characters mind.
monsters inc should provide a little inspiration - look at the body rotations of Mike.
I would put this in the focused critique section except I don’t really consider this good enough.
Can’t see enough character animation - this is plenty good enough.
The lag of arms make the expression difficult… with arms you could stretch them straight down with raised shoulders and making fists to make him look angry…
You only could do this with facial expression. Let him look down, make an eyelid (have a look at mike from Monsters Inc!)… let him blink more often then normal (because he´s angry)… look arround on the floor… stuff like this.
Perhaps it would help to make everyone aware that this is an assignment for a class, and there are certain restrictions placed upon it. Firstly, it has to be a cycle. No complicated acting outside of that. Second, we can add props to the rig, but we’re not supposed to make any non-trivial modifications (so blinking eye is out).
We’re supposed to do this as purely with the poses and motion as possible.
Tweaking only works up to a point. It will never fix larger problems, and it’s really only applicable when things are more or less right already.
This isn’t more or less right already. It feels like there’s something I’m just missing.
Very true. So far I’ve just been using myself and a mirror as reference, but you’re right that it would be useful to see how other people have dealt with similar problems. Thanks for the reminder. 
Well… yeah, I figured an exagerated stomp would communicate anger, but it doesn’t seem to do so on it’s own. I did a lot of sketches but could never seem to get the ball to really look angry.
The weight is swinging from side to side, with the apexes occuring at the exagerated knee-lift poses. In checking that, though, I noticed that my arcs on the ball (hips?) are a bit sharp from the front view. I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing or not in this case, since it is a stomp, which is supposed to have a lot of impact. I’ll mess around with it and see what I can get.
This doesn’t solve the problem of the acting, unluckily.
Incidentally, it occurs to me too late that I should have put this in the WIP forum. Sorry everyone. :-/
Think Daffy Duck. Give him an unbalanced forward incline, but keep the eye level and forward.
Is this rage or a seething anger? Personally, I’d vote for the latter as it’s more subtle, but interesting. Imagine he’s grumbling angrily to himself as he moves. Have him move slowly, but with determination… try to keep the body on an even level despite the leg movement (but not so much that it’s robotic)… rotating the body with each step rather than having it bob up n’ down. He knows exactly where he’s putting each foot, because each step is bringing him one closer to kicking you in the face.
Of course, these are all suggestions as to how I’d do it. Use and discard them as you best see fit.
Well good luck with your school project Cessen. I just realized, you’re not using Armatures, your second movie gave it away. You’re using something else, that obscure control method or something like it.
Which means you don’t have the benefit of the Armature flip pose button which halves your work. Instead I reckon you would have to do the full walk cycle instead of half of one. Interesting result none the less.
I see a problem with the eye being the body. It waves around too much for what I would understand as an angry walk. If I would angrily walk towards something, my head and eyes would be pretty much focused.
Maybe you can fix that by making the foot movement more fluent and the steps smaller.