Original subtitles

- [Instructor] As usual, once I'm done

with polishing the torso or the center of gravity,

I work on the contact points of the character.

So I will work on the feet as always.

I will start with the right leg

as it's going to be pretty fast.

First of all, I want to make sure

that the leg gets fully extended

before the foot leave the ground.

So I will simply delay by a couple

of frame the moment the foot leave the ground.

From there, I will make sure that the foot

is drawing a nice arc in space,

and then I will slightly push the z location curve

to create the up pose of the foot right in the middle.

I will then switch the handles to vector

for the starting point and ending point

of the z location and x location.

This way I make sure that the foot

is accelerating when leaving the ground

and when it's about to contact the ground.

Then I can revise the heel orientation

or heel rotation using the heel controller,

raising the heel just before the foot leave the ground

and flattening the foot a couple

of frame after the contact pose.

Then I'm also working on the toes of the character.

So as usual, I will make them drag,

meaning that they will be pointing

toward their previous position.

On the contact pose,

I will raise the toes

and then I will slap them on the ground one frame later.

And I will convert the contacting key

of the toes to vector

so that I'm sure that they are accelerating

before they hit the ground,

even if it's over only one frame.

Then I will work on the jumping motion.

So I will make sure

that the foot leave the ground late enough

so that I get an extended leg.

And as I move the foot,

I will also work on its quaternion rotation

to make it drag.

So the ball of the foot will be pointing

toward its previous position,

and then while in the air,

I will make it transition

toward its next position,

toward the contacting pose.

I will slightly open the foot just before the impact

so that the character land on the edge of the foot,

and it slightly pivot while the weight

is shifting onto the foot.

Then I will work on the kicking motion

of this current foot,

the foot that is contacting the ground.

It has a specific rotation,

as we have see in the reference.

It twist to follow the hips

and then just after the impact,

it twist backward very fast.

So we have this very fast back and forth motion

of the heel toward the target.

In this case, it's driven by the W quaternion rotation

for my foot, and I'm creating this V shape

with the curve

where when it's going down,

it rotates toward the target,

and after frame 81, it rotates back.

To make this motion less linear,

I will hold the pose for a couple of frames

by adding a new key on frame 80 and 81.

And then I will make the foot ease into its rest pose,

just before the left foot enter contact

with the ground.

Once I'm done with this,

I will work on the last step backward

with the same checkpoint in mind as before.

I want to make sure that the leg extend a bit

before the foot leave the ground.

And that the foot contact the ground

before the weight of the character starts to shift

toward the current foot.

So as usual, I'm often delaying the moment

where the foot is leaving the ground.

In this case, by two frames.

And then I switch the contacting pose to vector

so that I get a hard contact.

And I input a bit of up pose in between

using the z location to make the foot raise in space.

From there, as usual,

I will refine a bit the heel controller

to make sure that the heel is raising

whenever the foot is getting pulled,

and that it's at it highest point

just before the contact frame.

Then I will switch to the foot rotation

and see if I can make it drag a little bit.

And as I did before,

I want the foot to rotate a bit after the contact

as the weight of the character is shifting upon this foot.

And also, contact first with the inner edge

of the foot, and then the foot will tilt

to become flat.

This create a slight roll on the ground

of the foot that looks more natural

than the foot getting flattened directly on the ground

as it contacts.

As the final detail, as usual,

I will work on the toes.

Whenever the foot is leaving the ground,

I will make the toes drag

and eventually, when it contacts the ground,

I will raise them a bit

so that they slap the frame after the contact.

Another detail I wanted to add is the friction

of the toes on the ground

when the character is twisting to throw the kick.

If you flatten your hand on the table

and you push on the hand and try to twist it,

you will see your fingers dragging

in the opposite direction as the twist

because of the friction and the resistance

on the ground, or on the table.

So this is what I'm doing here

using the z Euler rotation.

I rotate them toward their previous position.

It's the same principle as when we lift the foot

but in this case, the motion is side to side

instead of being up and down.

From there, I've worked on the left foot.

At this point, the workflow is pretty linear.

I hope you understand what I've been doing before

and if not, you should rewatch the videos.

I know how confusing it can be

to read the graph editor,

especially for beginners where you are not comfortable

with the tools.

So talking about poses, rhythm and spacing

might not translate for you watching those curve.

If it's the case, jump back to the squirrel chapter

and make sure that you practice with this character.

During the switch,

I'm mainly reworking the up pose

so that it's smallest in the middle of the motion

of the foot toward its new position.

And as you can see, I deal with the z curve a bit

like with the bouncing ball

with vector handles when the foot is leaving the ground

and hitting the ground

and a scale key in between.

Now, as you have guessed,

most of the work was during the kicking,

first, make sure that you calculate your motion path.

The first choice I did

was to make the foot to stay on the ground

as long as possible.

This way we do get the feeling

that the hips is pulling the leg

as strong as possible.

But also, it will all need to get less frames

to throw the kick

so that it will be very fast,

and very snappy.

So as the foot is leaving the ground,

I make sure that it's very close

to its initial pose

so that I will have a big spacing

between the starting frame and the contacting frame.

We will have a big acceleration,

so for the in between,

I'm favorizing the first position,

so that the spacing get bigger and bigger

and we do feel the acceleration

of the foot before the contact pose.

Once I feel good with this,

I will make sure that my arcs are clean,

especially on the impact frame.

I will slightly tweak the position of the foot

from the camera view

so that it perfectly wrap around the punching bag,

creating a nice arc.

Since the punching bag is an accessory,

I will pose the bag later on,

paste on the foot motion.

But it's not hard for me to create a nice arc

from the camera view,

considering that the punching bag

will be more or less there

since we have blocked everything before.

Then when the leg is pulled back,

I will make sure that I get a very clean arc

and that the foot is accelerating toward the ground.

Beyond being bound to your graph editor,

you should be more watching and analyzing your motion path.

This is the tool that perfectly translate to you the arcs

and the spacing of your animation.

Then with experience, you will be able

to read this also into your graph editor.

As usual, from there, I will work on the heel controller.

That's pretty straightforward.

As the foot is leaving the ground,

I'm raising the heel.

The only tricky thing

is that our character just jumped

into the anticipation for the kick.

So the heel is going down

and then he's pushing to throw the kick.

So the heel is raising.

There is this slight plateau at some point.

From there it's all about building the smear frames.

Don't hesitate to work with all the controllers,

like the toe controller, for example,

to make the foot longer

as it's getting pulled from the ground.

The trajectory of the knee

will also be crucial,

so it's very important to track the arc

of the knee and from there,

build the shape of the leg.

Just think of the leg as a whip.

You want to create a nice curly shape

with the whole leg

that is going toward the kicking position.

Make sure that the foot orientation,

make it drags toward its previous position.

And take advantage again of all the controllers.

There are tweaker on the top of the toes,

so do not hesitate to make those toes dragging.

At this stage, it's not about animating

but really sculpting your pose.

There are only three frames of your character.

They must be perfect.

One tip to get this muscle shape

is to hide the heel of the character

from the camera point of view.

You can easily do this by using the ankle tweaker

instead of trying to rotate the foot.

I'm trying my best to get a smooth shape for the leg.

There are limitation due to the anatomy of the character

but also the resolution of his mesh

and the number of controllers in the rig.

On the frame, just after the contact with the bag,

I will scale on one axis the sheen

and the foot so that it feels

like they are squashing on the bag.

It's like creating an explosion.

You start with a thin shape

and then you make it very big.

And this visual pop will bring more impact

to your animation.

And this is exactly what we want for the kick.

When it's done over one frame like that,

it's barely viewable or noticeable

but it will feel for sure.

For this kind of shape,

I don't really have any rules to tell you

or to explain you.

What I do advise you is to search for references,

like in anime, for example,

where they do deform a lot the character

to get crazy perspective

or crazy impactful shapes like that.

You will also find this kind of crazy shape

in kids cartoon.

I think that's a very, very interesting source

of inspiration whenever it comes to stylized animation

because I guess that as the target are kids,

we consider that they are more fantasy

or more imagination than adults.

And so they would react positively to crazy shapes.

But in the end, if you input it in your animation

and it's subtle enough,

it will work for any public or any audience.

For the last step of this polishing stage on the left leg,

there is nothing we haven't seen already

or we haven't talked about

while working on the other foot.

So now we need to polish the hips,

the chest, neck, head and then the arms

of the character.