The Roof Jump

After the reaction, comes the "Roof Jump" I have been working on the timing of this Jump it is quite tricky to figure out because I don't have reference videos as that would have been to dangerous to film. So I have my friend doing some reference videos of jumping across a n "invisible" gap, well the ground. You can see the reference videos just below.






And I have also been using Richard Williams "The Animator's Survival Guide" to help with the run up and jump because it has 2-3 pages on poses, I've added a picture of the poses I have been using to help me animate, below.

I have also been looking at Youtube videos, of Roof Jumps, mostly these two videos below are very helpful to show what the arms and legs are doing when the character is in the air.





I planned out some simple poses also, so I could start blocking out the poses, and work out the timing of the Jump, Here's some quick pose drawings below.

There not the final poses set in stone,because I will probably keep changing the poses until I'm happy that they're perfect. Here is my progress so far of my Jump. I have been making many changes, and tweaking the time for the past day, I like the timing so far.




And while the main character is getting ready to jump, the other character is running right behind him, trying to catch him, so I have been working on that whilst animating the jump, I have just been using a basic run cycle for this. This is my progress so far, below



I've been working on this jump non stop, to get it right, I want it perfect, the timing, the poses everything, I must have started over about 8-9 times now, and again I keep saying it looks right until it doesn't. So I think at this point I have got near enough to finishing off the stepped faze. After watching the whole chase scene from Total Recall (2012) about a dozen times and pausing each frame and copying it, I think the jump is becoming more life like. I mean I still need to tweak the arms, legs, back and landing pose, but I think the timing is almost there.



Now that I've almost finished tweaking the jump, I'm working on the other character, who is chasing the main character, but won't jump off the roof after him. instead just tries to grab him. This is what I so far....



More progress with the main characters stumble from the jump, and him picking himself back on, I've been working on this most of the day and tweaked it several times, but I think it's quite close to being finished, obviously I still need to spline my animation.


From my storyboard, I had the main character get up and turn back to the chaser and give a sarcastic wave, to say "haha got away" so I have been working out some ways he would do that and this is my progress so far...

I used a reference video to plan out the steps for the wave, and below you can see the poses I have drawn from the video.