Jump Animation Rework

As part of the 3D Animation course at Howest - Digital Arts and Entertainment, we were given the task of creating a basic block of a jump in order to get familiar with posing in Maya. Two years later I have now decided to rework this animation created in the 4th week of my college education, so I can add it to my Portfolio.

Reference was shot and performed by yours truly. Coming from a ballet background I performed the signature 540, or Revoltade move, but decided to make it look more like an action jump instead of an acrobatic display of skill.

The initial task was to find and accurately copy the main key poses into 3D space, before working on timing and applying the remaining principles of Animation. This was the final stage for the task when it was originally created and the starting point for the rework.

Having gained more knowledge in the skill of 3D Animation along with more experience in applying the principles of Animation, I began the Blocking Plus process. I described the motion further, adding inbetweens to especially make sure the take off and landing had enough information for Maya to compute. After the movement was firmly in place, I refined poses further by cleaning silhouettes and arcs in body and motion.

Satisfied with the timing and poses, I moved on to the stage I had the least experience with: The Splining. Starting from the center of gravity (COG), I began removing unnecessary keyframes and emphasizing the Airtime even more. Next, I removed sliding in the feet and wrote a script to match IK and FK controls in order to switch smoothly between them. After finishing the splining, I added a bit of breathing at the end to keep the character alive.

After the last bit of tweaking and replacing the breathing at the end with a small jump to adjust after the main kick, I reached a point where I decided to call it done so I can move on to other projects. I hope you enjoy the finished Jump Animation Rework.