Skirt weights on a very short stylized character

[lemoncakes (Berke)]

Hi everyone!

I’m having a hard time setting up weights for the skirt on this model. Usually I don’t have a problem with clothing but for this instance, character’s legs are too short and the skirt is just two loops of surfaces, making it extra hard to follow character’s legs while running. The results I achieve are:

either too stiff or

too janky.

I know this model being super low poly and running animation separating legs too much are limitations for mesh deformation in this case but if you have any solutions, I would highly appreciate it!

farm-character.blend (4.2 MB)

[RSEhlers]

Maybe start by making the skirt tangent to the body…
Then when animation starts it has time to settle into position, rather than starting very close to the legs… Weight painting with a radial gradient to control bending and adjust to a flower pattern to add pleats…