Small Wins Case Study

Character Animation

Tiny Wins was working on a branding project case study for Small Wins and I was given the opportunity to jump in on some of the character animation. The first step of my character walk cycle process invariably consists of optimizing the assets by breaking down the characters into separate layers for animation. For humanoid characters, those layers typically consists of head, neck, torso, hip and limbs, but these fruit characters I was working on are really just single torsos with limbs attached.

Them legs

A closer look at the animated legs, moving at 50% speed. They’re essentially shape layers morphing from keyframe to keyframe. The imperfection of their form is OK in this case due to the movement speed and the size of their final appearance. The legs are parented to the torso, which shifts up and down along the Y-axis to make the character look like they’re bobbing up and down as they walk.

Since the green apple character is the only one holding tools, I thought it’d make sense to add on some extra motion for it. By offsetting the bucket’s rotation, we’re able to make the bucket look like it’s swinging more fluidly. There’s also a bending effect applied to the paintbrush to mimic resistance as it comes into contact with the body of the character. Little touches like these add up to make all the difference when it comes to high quality animation.