Original subtitles

- Let's go ahead with the blocking stage of our run cycle.

We will now work on the down pose also called passing pose

where the contacting foot is more or less aligned

with the center of gravity of our character

and the opposite foot is passing,

almost passing the center of gravity depending on the kind

of run you're doing.

Note that the torsal route has a bit

of left to right motion,

where the weight is shifting toward the contacting foot.

But this left to right motion need to be more subtle

than on the work cycle

or your character will feel very heavy.

Next pose, I'm not thinking about the timing.

We have four poses on 12 frames,

I will key every free frames.

So I will jump on frame free

and key all the controllers.

As in the action editor and choose all channels.

During the blocking stage,

it's important to key the whole character on each main poses

to avoid any foot sliding or weird interpolation

of the different controllers

or the right foot to the ground level,

cancel the rotation on the foot role

and place it under the root of the character.

You, what I told you in the previous video,

in this case, I need to slightly raise my character

on the first poofs because on the down pose,

I feel like he's too low compared to the previous one.

So I will push the character up,

selecting both the feet and the torso root controller.

As he is pushing on his right leg,

his hips will raise on the right side

and the hips should not be twisted that much

since we are in the passing pose

and the shoulders and hips will be kind of aligned

with the feet.

Here is one of the most important tip of this video,

whenever I'm building a new pose

if I can't get a good result right away,

I will cancel the rotation of the torso root and repose it.

Press Alt + R to cancel rotation on the hips

and the torso routes

and then rebuild the pose.

It's better to do so than trying to match the pose

from the previous one.

If we have made some transformation that doesn't fit.

You will be fighting with your ring

and at the end of the blocking,

you will have lots of weird pose

in your different controller

while it may look kind of, okay,

your rig will be kind of broken.

So trust me,

you may take a little more time blocking

your poses this way,

but whenever you feel like the character is not responding,

or the rig is not responding properly,

just cancel the rotation and rebuild the pose

from scratch.

You will save them a lot of time during the polishing.

Back to our pose,

don't forget that the feet have a slight right

to left movement while in air.

Position of the foot depend on the people

and on the speed at which you are running.

Some people will have their feet going on the outside during

the passing pose other on the inside.

Since we are blocking the pose don't forget

to select all your keys and set them

to constant interpolation.

Regarding the global arm position.

You will generally keep your arms close to your body,

the faster you run.

So basically what you have to think about when working

on your poses is the faster, the straighter.

since you've matched your video reference

or the reference provided,

don't hesitate to fine tweak the first pose.

Then the second pose,

maybe lean a bit more forward the character

to make him look like a little more dynamical

that will surely refine those poses

when we will be working on the curves.

Let's now jump on to the push pose.

This is one of the most beautiful

and iconic extreme of a run cycle it's where

the contacting leg is straight back

and the leading arm is at its maximum speed.

As the arm and the shoulder up pulling

the body upward in the first video,

the leading arm and shoulder will hit their extremes

before the feet.

The fist generally don't have a big side to side motion.

It can be tempting to cross

the right hand toward the left shoulder,

but that's kind of a mistake.

You will get a cool pose, but less realistic run cycle.

In the case of this exercise,

even if we do a slightly stylized run cycle,

try to match something pretty realistic.

You can make then some badass run cycle,

once you master the run cycle principles.

So I will go on frame six.

I will raise the heel of the contacting leg

and cancel any rotation on the toes.

Then I will move the leg backward

and slightly raise the torso.

I gain advise you to use the foot roll controller,

to orientate the foot

and make the toes slightly dragging backwards.

As usual for this kind of cycle,

the hips will be twisting toward the forward leg

and the torso root and chest controller

will be twisting the opposite direction.

The left shoulder need to be raised back

and the left elbow is almost at its highest point.

I've slightly the left forearm and left hand forward

to make them drag a bit.

I will then raise the right shoulder and push it forward

and I will raise the right right arm,

twisted it so that I keep the face clear

from the right hand.

The final touch is to make the legs feet

and knees a little straighten,

so that we get a good aerodynamics

and the pose that tells you,

hey, I'm going forward.

This relies a lot on lines of action,

but we will deal with this animation principle

a little later in this course.

For the time being, just look at all the silhouette tells us

that the character is pushing up and forward.

The last pose we will have two bird is the up pose.

This is going to be pretty straight forward

since this is when most of our controllers hits

their extreme poses.

Make sure you're twisting the chest and the hips

to the maximum,

the left shoulder and left elbow

are at their highest point.

So does the right shoulder and the right hand

and then pose the feet according to the reference,

making sure that the right leg is dragging back

with the toes also dragging

to get a nice arrow shape of the leg

that points toward the previous position

of the foot in space.

And then as usual don't hesitate

to rework each controller to get a better pose.

Don't forget to double check the video reference.

As you may get some more details like the left elbow.

is getting higher and the left forearm

is slightly bending inward.

Don't target to slightly twist the arm

to keep the head clear

and finally you should scrub through your animation

as often as possible.

So that you can fine tweak the previous poses

so that the flow looks great.

Once I'm done with that,

I will make sure I add a key frame on all the channel

of this key.

And then I will,

then I will go back on frame zero in the 3d viewport.

Select all the controllers,

press Ctrl + C to copy the pose and then go to frame 12

and in the 3d viewport press control Shift + V

to mirror the pause.

Then I just have to repeat the process,

go on frame free copy the pause

then go 12 frames later on frame 15

and paste the mirrored pause and repeat the process.

Finally, I will just have to duplicate

all the keys from frame zero onto frame 24.

Once I'm done

and it seems that the cycles work,

I will insert a key frame on every single keys

I have created

so that all my controllers are keyed

and we have our linear, our cycle.

As we can finally see our whole cycle.

We can finally check what's working and what's not.

In my case,

I feel like the animation lack of dynamism

to get more dynamic run cycle,

you can push the torso route forward

and lean your character forward too a little more.

When birding a run cycle,

the more horizontal you get the more dynamism you will have.

If you think about the stereotypical anime ninja run cycle

like in our route.

So legs are generally pushed to back while the torso

is pushed forward and is almost horizontal.

Once you've tweaked all your pose.

Don't forget to again to again mirror them on each keys.

Here is the result I got from our blocking stitch.

The run cycle looks pretty cool, pretty natural

not too dynamic, not too stylized

which is perfect to learn our fundamental.

Since we've been keying every free frame

in some kind of thinning our fashion,

the run cycle works.

What we can do now,

is offset some of the key poses

to slightly stylized our run cycle.

For a light skilled and agile character.

We want to favorize the airborne pause.

The idea is to hold the up pose a little longer

and switch from the straight pose down pose

and pushing pose a little faster,

the process in itself is not super complicated

and not super interesting.

I'm just moving some keys until I get to the right timing.

So in the end I've set the down

or passing pose on frame free and 15.

The pushing pose on frame five and 17,

so that we have only two frame between

the down and pushing pose.

So that the foot is rapidly sliding on the ground

before we get back into the air

with the up pose on frame eight and 20.