04 / MAYA · CHARACTER ANIMATION STUDIES

Movement
as expression.

I stepped outside my usual game-design work to explore how personality could come through poses, timing and the relationship between a character and a floating weapon.

I learned pose-to-pose workflows, collected references, filmed movements myself and iterated against feedback. The floating-sword attack was the centrepiece.

MayaPose-to-poseCharacter animation

BACK TO EARLY WORK ↗

ARCHIVAL ANIMATION / EARLY MAYA WORK · VIEW VIDEO WITH CONTROLS

01 / PRIMARY CASE STUDY

Learning to communicate through movement.

I wanted to explore another side of game development, so I learned Maya and started studying movement in detail. The central challenge was a character and floating sword that had to work together without feeling like a single rigid object. One gesture. Two performers.

ANTICIPATION

Readable intent

Establish the pose and direction before the strike, even when the attack is meant to deceive.

HAND / WEAPON RELATIONSHIP

Shared line of action

Gesture and floating blade follow compatible arcs; one amplifies the other.

FOLLOW THROUGH

Weight and consequence

Exaggerate timing and body compression so the impact can be understood.

Early project work using a sourced character rig. The animation work, references and iterations are the subject of this case study, not original character modelling.

02 / FROM NOTES TO CHARACTER

Learning the tools, then the movement.

Before I could animate the floating sword, I had to learn Maya and work through the fundamentals. My notes gradually became timed poses, and those poses became a character performance.

Notebook notes on Maya camera controls and transform tools — 01 / STARTING OUTLearning MayaNavigation, viewport controls and working with transforms.

Handwritten pendulum animation planning with anticipation and follow-through — 02 / EXERCISESAnticipation and follow-throughBreaking simple motion down before attempting a character.

Annotated contact, down, passing and up drawings for a walk cycle — 03 / KEY POSESPose-to-pose planningContact, down, passing and up became a way to structure motion.

Maya viewport showing the posed sourced character rig with an accompanying sword — 04 / APPLICATIONCharacter and swordUsing a sourced rig to stage coordinated gestures and weapon movement.

03 / DEFLECT STUDY

Character and floating sword in the deflect animation study

DASH / DEFLECT · ORIGINAL 2023 TIMING, ONE CYCLE

The deflect was difficult to read.

My early version lost energy when the character stopped while the sword kept spinning. Feedback pushed me to revise the timing, move the sword sooner and strengthen the body rotation.

I recorded reference footage to understand the steps of the spin and used the resulting poses to rebuild the action.

REVISIT COMBO STUDY ↑

04 / SUPPORTING DEVELOPMENT

The fundamentals underneath.

Walk and run cycles gave me the foundation for timing, weight, spacing and clean arcs. I gradually moved from simple key poses to more believable transitions, secondary actions and character intent.

REFERENCEObserve and record movement

KEY POSESStage readable actions

REVISIONAdjust timing, weight and appeal