I have no training in animation but it’s something I’m determined to learn and master. Here you’ll find some animation sketches for which I only allow myself five hours. I’m hoping limiting the time in this way will force me to learn fast and work smart.
I’ll be using a cyborg model from the Asset Store and will accompany each one with a little context or flavour so that you get an idea of my thought process. As I get better, so will the animations!
To grab the unity project with all the animations head to my GitHub
Big Recoil
Even though she’s in a strong, confident pose to begin with I wanted the force from the recoil of the railgun to throw her back a bit. As her lower half is the most mechanised part of her I wanted that to have the slightest reaction to firing the gun, so she only needs to step back a little to regain her composure. Her torso and head though are thrown back quite violently.
After firing she sizes up her next target and slams the gun down to fire once again. You can see the weight of the weapon in her right hand when she catches it.
The particle effects and camera shake add to sell the power of the railgun quite nicely.
Ninja Landing
A heavily trained ninja lands silently and assesses her surroundings. You can see that the landing rocks her whole body and she takes a second to compose herself before looking up.
I like the level of polish I achieved with this one, though the planted hand could use more work (it sinks into the ground a bit and dithers between a few positions too quickly). I had planned for her to jump up again so I could loop the animation but that’s the nature of this challenge, no more than 5 hours!
IK
For the next 5 hour challenge I wanted to learn about inverse kinematics and add IK solvers to the rig. This took away almost an hour but was well worth it and not just because of the silliness that happened initially!
Sprint Cycle
I wanted to give her sprint Olympic good form, notice how her head barely moves and her torso compensates for the motion also highlighting her robotic nature.
johannes 