After rigging Sprout over the weekend, this week I actually got around to animating the character. On the docket this week was basic locomotion; idle, walk, run, and jump. I only got to the first three, so I plan on pushing the jump to next week.

This was a first pass at the motion. There’s still a good amount of clean-up and smoothing left to do, but for this week, here’s the result:

Overall, not too bad! I’m planning on overhauling the idle animation to make the stance a bit more relaxed;  because right now Sprout looks like she’s a bit pissed off.  I also plan on toning down the leaf’s movement for the walk cycle. Plus, like I mentioned, smoothing out some of the motion.

The biggest challenge with animating Sprout is definitely that leaf. It’s been real tricky to nail down that reactionary motion. For a good part of this I felt like I was fighting against the rig to get the movements that I wanted.  It’s going to take some practice and iteration for sure.