From Stiff to Natural: An Iterative Journey through Fundamental Character Animation

During this semester’s animation course, I systematically studied the keyframe animation workflow and its core technical principles. The curriculum covered everything from basic locomotion cycles—such as walking, running, and jumping—to more advanced skills like lip sync and facial animation.

For this project, I created various looped animations for two contrasting character models, both sourced from Kingston University’s open resource archive. After careful consideration, I chose two very different characters to work with:

·Tom Cat — the iconic character from the classic cartoon Tom and Jerry, known for his mischievous, exaggerated personality and highly elastic, slapstick movements.

·A culturally styled combat warrior — a heavily built, game-oriented character with a grounded and powerful fighting style, requiring realistic weight and combat rhythm.

These two characters differ significantly in behavioural logic, personality expression, and physical weight distribution, which posed completely different challenges throughout the animation process. For Tom Cat, the focus was on emulating classic 2D cartoon performance, exaggerating squash-and-stretch and comedic timing. The combat warrior, on the other hand, needed to reflect a more grounded, game-ready approach—emphasising believable force, proper motion flow, and engine-compatible transitions.

The reason I chose these two characters was strategic: working with Tom Cat as my first exercise allowed me to better understand how core animation principles apply in exaggerated, stylised contexts. Meanwhile, animating the combat warrior pushed me towards the standards of game animation—such as action readability, strike impact, and motion clarity.

In the following sections, I will document in detail:

·The practical lessons learnt through weekly class exercises

·The full creation process of base cycle animations (walk, idle, run, jump, dodge)

·Technical refinement in the animation curves

·How character identity shaped animation style

·A critical self-assessment of my creative and technical choices

To stay organised and manage workload efficiently, I also created a mind map and production timeline to guide the entire assignment from start to finish.

Animation Schedule: Mar 12 - May 7

Phase	Date	Tasks
1. Planning & Prep	Mar 12 - 14	• Define animation style (Walk/Run + Gameplay Pack) • Collect reference materials (movements/character traits)
	Mar 15 - 18	• Annotating arrow marking force lines in SyncSketch(Walk/Run + Gameplay actions) • Set up Maya file structure
2. Walk/Run Cycle	Mar 19 - 25	• Complete Walk/Run keyframes (Blocking phase) • Test animation fluidity
	Mar 26 - Apr 1	• Add character details (expressions/body language) • Optimize physics (weight/stride)
3. Gameplay Cycle Pack	Apr 8 - 14	• Complete blocking for 4 basic actions (idle/run/jump/dodge) • Test action transitions
	Apr 15 - 21	• Refine action details (expressions/transitions) • Adjust animation curves
	Apr 22 - 28	• Final rendering and animation export • Check engine compatibility
4. Blog & Final	Apr 29 - May 3	• Write blog (process/tools/results) • Organize image/video materials
	May 4 - 6	• Proofread blog content • Optimize layout
	May 7	• Publish final deliverables

Class Experience

Alongside the main project, I also completed several foundational exercises during class, including staging exaggerated Key Poses, simulating a bouncing ball colliding with a wall, and creating basic walk cycles using a simplified model. These tasks helped me grasp the core workflow of character animation and allowed me to experiment with some of the 12 Principles of Animation, such as exaggeration, anticipation, and arcs.

Although these activities were relatively simple, they laid an essential technical and conceptual foundation for the more complex character work I would go on to produce later in the term.

I hope that through this semester’s project, I can consolidate what I’ve learned in class while also exploring different stylistic approaches to animation. So now, let’s step into the practical stage of keyframe animation in Maya!

· Tom Cat

1. Preparation

Before animating Tom Cat’s walk cycle, I began by analysing the character’s core personality traits. As a classic cartoon figure from slapstick comedy, Tom’s movements are highly exaggerated, elastic, and full of mischievous energy. For the walk specifically, I aimed to capture a sense of lightness, confidence, and even a touch of swagger.

To clarify the visual tone, I first collected a set of walk references from Pinterest, focusing on stills that showed Tom’s distinctive body mechanics. I then found a suitable clip from the “100 Walk Cycles” video series that matched the style I was aiming for. I downloaded the clip and imported it into SyncSketch, where I did frame-by-frame annotations to trace motion flow and force direction—this helped me define my Key Poses more precisely.

2. Blocking and Key Pose Design

Following the practical methods introduced in class, I began by creating a clear production plan: first, to block out the full keyframe loop, and then to refine the finer details—such as the hip shifts and rotational offsets.

To ensure stylistic consistency and smooth motion, I used Studio Library to store the initial poses and their mirrored counterparts. I worked in both front and side orthographic views, and constructed the walk using four main Key Poses (with frame references and controller adjustments outlined below):

·Contact Pose (Frame 1 / Frame 13):
The front heel makes contact with the ground, while the rear toe is just about to lift off. The body leans slightly forward, and the weight shifts towards the supporting leg. The legs are adjusted into a slight outward angle (“turned-out”) to enhance the character’s bold, swaggering attitude.

·Down Pose (Frame 4 / Frame 16):
The hips drop to their lowest point on the Y-axis, with the supporting foot planted firmly on the ground. The pelvis rotates under the influence of opposing force, subtly dragging the chest with it. The overall weight drops, emphasising a grounded, stomping step.

·Passing Pose (Frame 7 / Frame 19):
The lifted foot passes across the midline. At this point, the body’s weight is fully over the supporting leg. The pelvis and chest both rotate on the Z-axis, reaching their maximum twist to show energy transfer and a sense of motion.

·Up Pose (Frame 10 / Frame 22):
The weight begins to transfer to the opposite side. The stepping foot stretches out to its furthest forward position, with the front leg fully extended. The hips rise back up on the Y-axis, and the head tilts slightly upward—expressing Tom’s confident, almost theatrical attitude.

Throughout the process, I paid particular attention to conveying Tom’s proud and confident walk. I also incorporated facial expression controls to ensure that the character wasn’t simply “moving”, but genuinely performing.

3. Curve Refinement and Secondary Animation

During the Spline phase, I focused on refining each part of the body in line with biomechanical logic. Using the Graph Editor, I systematically cleaned and adjusted the motion curves, with special attention paid to the following areas:

Hip Motion Trajectory:

·Y-axis (vertical): The vertical movement follows a smooth sine curve, with the lowest points at Frames 4 and 16, and the highest points at Frames 10 and 22.

·Z-axis (side-to-side shift): The lateral sway reaches its maximum at Frames 7 and 19, aligned with the shift over the supporting foot.

·Y-axis rotation: At the stepping moments (Frame 1 / Frame 13), the pelvis rotates up to ±27°, helping to convey weight shift and character personality through body language.

Foot Curves:

·Ground contact phase (Frames 1–8 of each step): The Z-axis movement remains strictly linear, maintaining foot slide consistency.

·Swing phase: The heel follows a parabolic path to ensure a natural stepping arc.

·Toe lift-off: The foot rotates outward by 3–5°, adding a subtle cartoon-like exaggeration to the movement.

Tail & Arm Overlap:

·The arms were animated using FK controls with staged overlap: upper arm → forearm → hand, each delayed by 2–3 frames. For example, the upper arm starts swinging back on Frame 1, the forearm follows around Frame 3, and the hand changes direction around Frame 10.

·The shoulders move in coordination with the arms—dropping slightly (Y-axis -0.3cm) at the lowest point of the cycle and lifting subtly at either end to reinforce the sense of rhythm.

Head Delay:

·The head's rotation on the X-axis lags behind the chest by approximately two frames. After the hips reach their peak at Frame 10, the head doesn't begin to dip until Frame 12—this delay helps convey a realistic sense of inertia and overlapping motion.

4. Rendering Settings and Playback Output

In the Graph Editor, I set both Pre Infinity and Post Infinity to Cycle to ensure a seamless loop. I then checked the smoothness of each animation curve, adjusting their amplitude and timing as needed. A Playblast was exported for frame-by-frame review, with the following settings:Codec: H.264，Resolution: 1920x1080，Anti-aliasing: Enabled，Frame Rate: 24 fps，Export Range: Frame 1 to Frame 250

Lighting Setup:
To simulate a stage-like environment, I used a three-point lighting system:

·Key Light: Area Light positioned at a 45° angle from the front-left, intensity 500, colour temperature 4500K

·Fill Light: Placed on the right side, intensity 600, colour temperature 6500K

·Ambient Light: SkyDome Light to replicate environmental softness, brightness set to 1, with varied directional scatter to avoid uniformity.

·Materials and Texturing:
Using the Arnold renderer, I applied an aiStandardSurface shader to the character. As the character is covered in stylised fur, I manually adjusted the roughness values across different body regions to enhance surface readability and make the material responses more convincing.

5. Self-Reflection

This animation made me realise that simply posing a character is far from enough to build meaningful motion language. In particular, during the Spline phase, my lack of fluency with the Graph Editor became apparent—I encountered several cases where unexpected keyframes on certain controllers caused deformation or disrupted timing. Through this, I began learning to troubleshoot using a frame blocking plus local adjustment approach, identifying and correcting issues systematically.

The tail animation was by far my weakest area. While I understand the need for delayed overlap across segments, I failed to implement a consistent logic for that delay in practice. As a result, the tail movement felt out of sync and disconnected from the main body rhythm. I realised that although I could mimic the appearance of follow-through and overshoot, I still lacked an internal sense of motion timing.

Despite its flaws, this piece helped me shift from thinking about character animation as visual posing towards understanding it as a structure driven by internal force and timing. It marks a small but important step in that transition.

· Gameplay Cycle Pack