Bricks in Motion
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Does anyone have any tips for animating short dwarf/Hobbit legs? I'm really struggling.
You need some of these: http://www.brickfortress.com/
I'd rather not spend $1.15 a piece on buying something I don't need. I want to make the most of what I have. Does anyone have any good animation techniques?
In the test montage I made to prepare for my first THAC I knew I was going to probably use the gnome village that I had made beforehand, so I tried out some possible techniques that I might use for the gnomes.
One of these, which occurs around about 1:26 into the video is a run cycle which actually looks relatively convincing. I did this by animating the run as best as I could but I just didn't show the legs so their lack of motion was not apparent. Besides the arm motion, I also tilted the body a little bit on the studs to make it slightly more interesting.
Obviously, though, this will greatly limit your camera angles.
Another idea I thought up just now is that you could make the floor slightly elevated so that you could remove a little bit of it. Then you replace the short person's legs with tall legs and put him in that special lowered floor which is at exactly the right level so that the figure will be at exactly the correct height for a dwarf standing on the high floor in the rest of the area. Then if you frame the shot as to hide the missing floor and tall legs, you could have the minifigure do a walk cycle which should appear very natural. Or possibly have the figure move its torso up and down like in tall figure dialogue animation.
Of course, this still has the framing problem of the other idea. Plus you would have the added trouble of making sure specific parts of the floor can be easily removed.
Generally, however, I think that the best way to go about such things is to have your dwarf not move like a normal minifigure, or not even really try. In The Lost Invention I relied mostly on the figures darting about in cartoony slides, which are both easy to animate and also look fantastic. however, this could be quite detrimental to the style of your film if you are doing something serious.
That's all I can think of right now at least. Is there anything specific that you are looking to do with a dwarf?
All I can say is don't do this. It was terribly executed.
I might try to throw together a test of short-leg walk cycles (surprisingly, this has not been done on the Animation Challenge yet) later today and post them here. There are so many things to do, but the limitations can often be intimidating.
Alternatively, you could make the dwarf walk exclusively on flat-tiles, so the large studs do not become a problem. I did a similar thing in this video (even though you cannot see the tiles, and it's not much of a walk, but I hope you get the picture).
EDIT: I just found another example of where I animated dwarf legs. It's a fair approach, but again it's not properly executed.
Squid has some great suggestions.
Another way you could animate the dwarf's legs is by replacing the actual legs with 1x1 slopes, of the same color, during the walk or run cycle. I have never tried this technique myself but I suppose it could work.
Last edited by Willow Tree (February 3, 2015 (08:30am))
I'd rather not spend $1.15 a piece on buying something I don't need. I want to make the most of what I have. Does anyone have any good animation techniques?
...but you do need it. And it costs just a little more than a dollar! How much of a purist do you have to be before you cut off your nose to spite your face?
But if Jampot is making a film about several dwarves it's going to be 1.25$ times however many dwarves there are in the film, and if there are a lot that's going to add up. Also he may not have the time to wait for them to arrive.
I myself would rather just use the basic legs. And even so I don't have the money to even buy one pair of short legs. not all of us have much money.
Another way of doing it (I forgot all about this earlier) is the way twickabrick did it in his film Jurassic Floor .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgO1UzS0BfY
He used headlight bricks for sitting, and I think I saw a 1x2 hinge brick somewhere in it.
Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I'm trying to animate Rocket Raccoon (finally got the polybag, doing a short video to celebrate). I'll check our those links later once I get out of class.
jampot wrote:I'd rather not spend $1.15 a piece on buying something I don't need. I want to make the most of what I have. Does anyone have any good animation techniques?
...but you do need it. And it costs just a little more than a dollar! How much of a purist do you have to be before you cut off your nose to spite your face?
Id honestly rather not buy these legs. I don't like the look of them, they don't come in the colour I want for this brickfilm, and shipping costs mean ordering something to the UK from the USA makes it more than a dollar. Also, if there's a way of animating without them, which there are, I don't 'need' them.
And, as he said, he wants to make the most of what he has. I think one of the fun things about LEGO is working around the limitations of the medium (such as dwarf legs or limited points of articulation) to find new and inventive ways to make something work. In this light I feel that using custom bricks is a bit like cheating.
As far as a walk cycle goes, I actually animated one in the past. It's on my old computer which died, though, so I can't show any frames or animation, though from what I remember it looked pretty decent. As far as I recall I tried to replicate the standard seven-frame walk cycle as closely as possible. It went something like this:
Starting position: minifig standing normally on the baseplate.
lean back slightly (2 frames) -> lean forward -> lift legs partially on stud -> place legs on top/in between stud rows (2 frames) -> place legs partially on new studs and lean forward slightly -> place feet completely on stud and lean forward slightly -> lean back to starting position
Then rinse and repeat until you're finished and all that jazz.
Hope this explanation makes sense. I tried to have the whole body lean forward to help sell the idea that the minifig is actually moving in a (fairly) natural manner and not just awkwardly sliding around. I can't remember how I did the arm movements, though it shouldn't be too difficult to find a way.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any ideal method to pull off dwarf-leg walk cycles, but it's certainly fuel for experimentation.
Last edited by Mr Vertigo (February 3, 2015 (08:53am))
jahnocli wrote:jampot wrote:I'd rather not spend $1.15 a piece on buying something I don't need. I want to make the most of what I have. Does anyone have any good animation techniques?
...but you do need it. And it costs just a little more than a dollar! How much of a purist do you have to be before you cut off your nose to spite your face?
Id honestly rather not buy these legs. I don't like the look of them, they don't come in the colour I want for this brickfilm, and shipping costs mean ordering something to the UK from the USA makes it more than a dollar. Also, if there's a way of animating without them, which there are, I don't 'need' them.
I go for more the realistic style than the cartoon style, so I bought a few movable short legs and they do the trick nicely. I have used them in quite a few movies, though Spring is the only one we have posted that they are used in.
But I perfectly understand if you don't want to spend the money. In which case, Squids method of doing LEGO short legs is probably one of the best.
I make the characters jump. I just animated a sequence with a short legged person jumping. If you or anyone else wants me to post my jumping sequence, LMK and I will
What I make is moving the arms and incline the minifig to the sides a little bit. You have an example in my video A Hero's Journey between 0:04-0:16.
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