Chapter Descriptions

Chapter 1:  Biped Punch

Let’s get swinging into action! The introduction chapter will take you through the anatomy of a basic punch. Starting as we always do, with the body’s core, or “chi”, we will first animate the hips, moving the force through the shoulders, arm and finally the contact point. This chapter will illustrate how to use the principles of anticipation and follow through to give your attacks more dynamic flow and energy.

Chapter 2:  Kicking Attack

“Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” Nothing could be closer to the truth than this lopsided battle between two opponents. Although one of the two characters in this animation is larger, his lack of combat training shows. His movements are clumsy and rough, while the smaller fighter is well trained, precise and effective. In this example, we will be building the characters used from scratch using Jeremie Passerin’s “Gear” rigging system, and using the built in tools to create effective, bone-crunching fighting sequences.

Chapter 3:  Kicking Attack – Polish

Sweeping attacks, especially ones involving the legs, require particular attention to arcs. During the course of this chapter we will be using the ghosting tools in Softimage to tweak arcs and control the speed of motion through the use of spacing. Timing is also very important, and we will be using every tool available to us, including  the dopesheet and Animation Curve Editor.

Chapter 4:  Quadruped Attack

We will be repeating the basic punching attack, this time with our friend, the lioness. The quadruped poses unique challenges to attack sequences, and we will be addressing one of the most basic. The lioness uses her front paws to carry her massive weight, so transferring weight from one paw to the others allows her to use this paw for a swiping attack. As simple as this sounds and looks, there are many things going on in the body, The core elements, hips, spine and shoulders move together, as well as each of the 4 paws. The head and tail also need to move along with the body. Keeping the motion of all of the parts together is one of the most challenging aspects of quadruped motion, and one we will be “attacking” in this series.

Christopher Tedin

Born in Sitka, Alaska, Chris started his career as a painter and sculptor. He has been working as an illustrator, graphic designer, and most recently as an art director in Chicago, Illinois. He has been teaching game design and animation for over 15 years. His students now work as animators and professional game designers at Blue Sky Studios, Digital Domain, Aardman/Sony, Microsoft, and as freelance independent artists. Many of his students are now college teachers themselves. He started in the early days with Strata StudioPro, then 3ds Max version 1.0, Maya 2.0, Softimage 3.8, Houdini, before finally settling on Softimage XSI, beginning with version 4.0 Foundation. Chris still sculpts and paints and teaches part time at Tribeca/Flashpoint Academy in Chicago.

Project Contents

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