I made this model after going through CG Cookie’s Low Poly Character series. Here’s a quick animation of him leaping over some obstacles.
#1 lazy Ninja.(genius mind)
Shadow Possession jitsu! 
Good job! 
Its sucks that Asama got killed off awhile back.
Aah! Spoilers!!
thats not a “spoiler”…(unless you haven’t ever seen the anime before)
he has been dead in the English anime for a long time now… (and the Manga for obviously longer 
)
died early in the Shippuden series.
Looks good but I honestly don’t know how much detail you put in for game characters because some of the basic principles of animation is missing here, namely:
- no lateral movements (a.k.a weight shifts)
- no anticipation before the jump (one may wonder from where he gain that thrust which requires him to pull up in the air)
- sudden stop (there could be little moving hold, i.e. laws of motion and inertia)
Apart from these major ones, there are some minor improvements that can make wonders for you, for example the sliding of the foot when he gets ready for the run. Seems, you don’t have controllers for toe and heel movements, adding those can enhance your walk/run cycle.
Happy animating and good luck!
Can i see a wire of the character?
Thanks for the feedback! I worked on giving the character a better launch point to generate the necessary thrust, take a look and let me know how it worked out. I still think it’s a bit jerky, but progress is progress.
Also, Exzema could you explain a bit more about what you mean by lateral movement? I don’t have much left-to-right movement but if you feel like the character isn’t shifting his weight properly during the movements I’ll need to take a closer look.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otoPh7fIyqY&feature=youtu.be
Attachments
By lateral movement, we mean not only the left-to-right movement of the Center of Gravity or Mass (CoG) but it includes the swinging of the hips as well and with pelvic bone rotating forward matching the forward leg movement (taking in control of the “controlled fall”), whereas torso would rotate in opposite direction to minimize the torque.
I may come up with a better illustrated examples at some later point in time. 
Did some more tweaking, and now the handspring doesn’t lose so much momentum when he vaults off his hands. Next I’ll need to tweak the distance he travels while leaping, doesn’t look right yet.
Okay, here you have a more illustrative description of the movements we talked about the other day (because I believe a picture worth million words) :evilgrin:
I have tried to explain it through two poses, because these ‘little but very important things’ applies to both static and dynamic stances.
PS: To get a kind of ‘focused critique’ on your animation, I would suggest you to render it out in front and side orthographic without any props (obstacles in your case) and yes, with a Frame Counter please. :yes: I have checked both your ver. 2 and 3, and I find few more problems than the very first one, explaining it from this current camera angle wouldn’t benefit much.
hehe nice work so far. for some reason he kinda reminds me of my fav mma fighter Kazushi Sakuraba
Hey Exzema, you are the king of illustrative graph to explain… I’m really impress, it’s a lot of time that you are spending on these drawings, thank you for your hard work!
On the drawing on the bottom left, the center of gravity seems too much on the left, I would put it above the ankle of the foot with the red line.
For your animation Ronnie, it looks good, but it’s difficult to really see because of these big obstacles, could you do a render without them, or make them 90% transparent so that we can see what happens with the hand/ground contact!
Mathias.
Wow, thanks again for the detailed comments!
Exzema, great illustration, I understand what you are referring to now. When I was working on the run cycle, I went back and forth a lot deciding on how much pelvic rotation I wanted. I decided on keeping it to a minimum because I felt the run looked too exaggerated with a lot of lateral movement. But I’m not opposed to changing it!
I have had a look at your latest update/version, sideways movement look much better now but you pelvic and CoG/root/main (or I don’t know what name you’ve) rotation still needs some work along with several other tweaks.
Right now, I am too much involved in various things. Once I get little more time to do the sketches, I will provide you with a detailed critique.
Keep animating! 