Day 26 - adding more details to leg and waist movements

What I did today:
Today I added more details to the leg movements in the passing keyframes as well as some more waist movements that were shown in the tutorial I am using and adjusting some of the movements for the waist in the graph editor to fit my character better.

For the legs in the passing motion, I wanted it to have the movement that a real leg has. when walking where. the leg will straighten out a bit and move out just a bit before moving to the next step.

I first started on the down position on frame 4 and rotated the leg a bit so that it would be straighter when it lifts up.

I then went to the pass position on frame 7 and rotated the leg along the z-axis by pressing 'R' and the 'Z'.

After that, I moved the leg over on the x-axis just a bit. I did this by pressing 'G' and then 'X'.

After finishing the movements on the first passing and down frames I then copied the movements I made on the down frame to the foot and copied and reversed it onto the other leg.

I also copied the movements and reversed them for the movements I made to the foot on the passing position, but I made a mistake and pasted them on the wrong keyframe. I accidentally pasted them on the last high position. To fix this mistake I pressed 'Control+Z' which is the key command for undo. I then copied the movements again and pasted them and reversed them on the correct passing frame. 

For the waist I wanted to make it so that on the passing frame the waist moved over a bit, to give the look that the body was putting more weight on the stepping foot. To do this I went to the passing frame on frame 7 and shifted the waist on the x-axis just a bit.

I then copied, pasted and reversed the movement onto the other passing frame.

To make the waists side to side movements for the weight transfer look smoother I went to the graph editor and removed all keyframes that weren't on the initial contact frames at the start and end or any keyframes that were on the passing frame. I also added a cycles modifier to the motion as well so that the movement would loop nicely.

The last thing I did today was something that was not in the tutorial. I chose the pelvic control and wanted to fix its z-axis rotation. I wanted to do this because the waist was moving outwards on the walk a bit too much that made it look exaggerated and not fitting for the character. To fix this I went to the graph editor and chose the z-axis rotation for the pelvic control and made the movement smaller then they were before. I did this by pressing G and moving the contact position keyframes at the end and start downwards. I also did the same to the contact position in the middle but instead of moving it downwards I moved the keyframe up to make the curve smaller. Doing this made the movement less exaggerated and better for my character.

This is the lower part of the animation, which for now is finished. So far the animation is coming together very well and is looking like a good walk animation.

What I'm doing tomorrow:

Tomorrow I will start on the upper body portion of the animation.