This tutorial is taught by Conan Sinclair, a full time freelance animator working on cartoon and game projects in Australia. His first course on “Tradigital” Animation (using traditional skills in a digital environment) focuses entirely on Body Mechanics.
This six hour course is outlined below:
Part 1 – Body Mechanics Basics. This lesson teaches the basics of how to make your body animations look real. Even though in a cartoon world anything is possible, there’s still some “rules” to play by. You can’t have joints bending every which way, and that’s one of the things this part looks into. The second half of this lesson teaches a simple animation exercise by making a body move from one side to another.
Part 2 – Jumping is a great movement exercise where you can get an appreciation for weight.
Part 3 – Sitting and Standing. Think about how often a character on TV gets up or sits down in a scene. In your own animations, you’ll find this a useful exercise to add some movement to a scene where your characters might otherwise only be talking.
Part 4 – Walk Cycles. The next few lessons focus on every animators favorite (or possibly most dreaded) sequence: the walk/run cycle. Conan teaches his method of breaking these down into four manageable key poses, which he then adds in-betweens to.
Part 5 – Run Cycles. Runs are similar to walks in that you’ll learn to create four key poses of the cycle, but this time with a bounding motion to it, and the faster the run, the more of a lean is added to the character.
Part 6 – Advanced Movements. This final lesson converts our side view cycles into front view and three-quarter view cycles, which can be a real test for new animators. Conan also teaches a walk cycle with a “double bounce” movement.
Like all CartoonSmart tutorials, source files are included in every lesson.