The Daily Wray: animated skateboarding

[wrayayrton]

I'm gonna try to keep and maintain a daily thread of skate animations to keep myself in practice. I like to animate tricks usually but sometimes I do small combos or lines. I make a point to try not to use a reference for a specific movement to keep everyone looking original, yet I strive for realism so please comment and criticize and tell me what you would do different.

KickFlick Pre Alpha footage
AOTD1: 360 flip
AOTD2: Nollie Double Kick Flip
AOTD3: Hippy Flip
AOTD4: THE WIDOWMAKER (Nollie Double Ghetto Bird)
AOTD5: Inward Heel Flip
AOTD6: Kickflip-BS Boardslide-Switch Body Varial Kickflip
AOTD7: Rick Flip
AOTD8: Blunt Kickflip out to Fakie 360 flip
AOTD9: Nollie Hardflip to Smith Grind, Bigflip out
AOTD10: Frontside 540 double hardflip
AOTD11: Nollie 360 flip
AOTD12: Double Big Flip
AOTD13: 360 Hardflip
AOTD14: Varial Kickflip to 50-50, Varial Heelflip out
AOTD15: Kick Flip

[HCH Media]

aaaaaaahhhh yeahhhhhhh :-)

[PoppySquidJr]

I know this is supposed to be about the animation, and the animation was really cool, but I have to comment on how much I love the visuals and colors of the environment. Reminds me of Jet Set Radio but with a more modern and subtle feel. Especially the "Level Design"

[saunders420]

I love the visuals and colors of the environment. Reminds me of Jet Set Radio but with a more modern and subtle feel. Especially the "Level Design"

really tho. nostalgia to the max over here haha.

For you to animate such intense skating. All the tricks and flips in the lines. I couldn't imagine how many times you got up to smoke haha lol jokes.

you should try replicating lines from skate videos. People would go banana's.


That tre. that scoop was fresh. stomped the shit outta it with your back foot. nice!

[Tabloid]

definitely keep posting this stuff, it's a great watch

[wrayayrton]

saunders420- if you got a line from a skate video you want me to animate, dont hesitate to put the video here and tell me what you wanna see and I'll give it a go. I typically animate lines that I make up since I think that's more fun. I notice it kinda takes the fun out of animating to basically trace/rotoscope something

sorry tabloid ive decided to never post anything here again suddenly :P
jk. here's today's AOTD:

[Antwan]

So sick man.
I am really interested in your process as an animator too.
How do you attack the realism factor?
Do you watch skateboarding videos, video games, what does it for you?
I learned my first Ollie by watching the Tony Hawk Pro Skater's game animations.
If the animators do motion capturing, even back then, they seem to be able to branch out realistically.

[wrayayrton]

when I animate i really just think of a trick or combo regardless of how realistic it is and then sit down and keep animating it till i'm satisfied.

usually I get stoned, parent the character and skateboard to a large dummy that i move through the scene like an action figure, auto-keying the general motion path of the skater, then I animate the board completely, followed by the feet, then the rest of him to follow. once I have a pretty good animation blocked in (a key every 5-10 frames) I take a break, get more stoned, and sit down and painstakingly do the detaily bits like fingers. most of the time the anim is done but I go back and pretty much completely redo the arms at least once just to see if i could do it better.

If I were a better rigger I'd do the board so the wheels roll and deck flexes, with real IK on the feet to the board and not just sliding keys butttttt I can't rig for shit.

Here's today's AOTD:


btw: thanks poppysquid! level design lighting, and propmodelling is one of my other hobbies.