Analysis of hopping motion

[robcat2075]

I did this for someone on the 11Second Club forum who was trying to do hopping motion and doing it poorly.

 

I'll share my comments here as they may be of use to A:M users who are also starting to animate...

 

Remember one of our earlier observations... you can't just jump up and expect to get forward motion from that.

 

I see his body lofting through the air, stopping, dropping down and back up, then lofting forward again... that will never look right.

 

Here's a real hop. Download this, watch it full screen, single-frame through it.

 

http://www.brilliantisland.com/am/HopAnaly...GSilentH800.mov

 

Watch the green X on the hips. It's always moving forward.

 

The yellow dots are when the body is in contact with the ground, the white dots are when it is in the air. The forward motion of the hips is fairly steady. It never pauses to just go up and down. The up and down motion is built into the forward motion.

 

 

 

When are the hips moving fastest? When the leg has just finished pushing the body into the air, before it loses contact with the ground.

 

When are the hips moving slowest? When the leg has been cushioning the landing, before it moves into the next leap.

 

Watch the hip at the last landing. In real life there's no overshoot, the body eases forward into the balanced pose.

 

Watch the motion of the foot. It gets left way behind as it pushes the body up and forward. It has to race way forward to catch the body for the landing. Your foot is always moving in rigid sync with the body. That will always look stiff.

 

Watch the motion of the unused foot. It's not rigidly attached to the body. It moves more than the hips or the foot. I didn't even know I was doing that. Sometimes it is gesturing ahead of the hips, most of the time it is lagging behind, but it's never in perfect sync, that would look very stiff.

[johnl3d]

Robert I wonder what your neighbors were thinking about your hopping ,,,,,, thanks for the tut

[robcat2075]

Robert I wonder what your neighbors were thinking about your hopping

 

You mean the neighbors who took down their six-foot fence and put up a nine-foot fence?

[mouseman]

What software did you use to annotate the video with the dots?

[robcat2075]

What software did you use to annotate the video with the dots?

 

I used the "Vector Paint" feature to draw the dots in After Effects (v5.0) I'm told the current After Effects doesn't have it.