My next exercise is a shooting cannon. The goal is to practice Anticipation and Squash and Stretch.

You can download the cannon rig here, and the lighting/rendering setup here. You can download the final animated scene here.

Using the rig:

Making of tutorial:

One more posing exercise. The theme of this one is "balance".

Practicing poses. The goal of this one is to convey "strength". Also to make a pretty render =)

You can download the final scene here. (you will also need a lumen rig and a barbell asset).

Here is the render setup that you can use in your own projects.

Also you can check out this post where I have collected the references I have used for inspiration.

My next 3D animation exercise, a dog run cycle:

My next exercise - sneaking walk cycle:

In this exercise, my goal is to animate a simple jump over the gap:

References:

Making of:

My next exercise - animating a run cycle:

Experimenting with my new rig, created a simple walkcycle animation.

First year Animation Mentor students do an exercise of putting a simple character rig into poses that express various emotions. This is a collection of some great examples for reference and inspiration.

• Body dynamics.

  Examples

  
  

• Physical strength
  

  Examples

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Balance
  

  Examples

  
  
  
  

• Happiness/Excitement

  Examples

  
  
  
  

• Devastation
  

  Examples

  
  
  
  
  

• Exhaustion
  

  Examples

  
  
  
  

• Boredom
  

  Examples

  
  

• Concern
  

  Examples

  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Pose from real life sketch - go outside, sketch a person in an interesting pose, and then pose character using this sketch as a reference.

This is a collection of ideas for animation exercises, from learning the fundamentals of animation to advanced acting scenes.

Fundamentals of animation

• Bouncing ball.(Slow in/out, Squash and Stretch.)
  Example 1
• Light ball and a heavy ball. (Timing. Showing Weight.)
  Example 1
• Firing cannon(anticipation).
  Example 1
• Pendulum platform. (Arcs and overlapping action)
  Example 1
• Tailor (Arcs and Overlapping action.)
  Example 1
• Obstacle course.
  Example 1 Example 2 Example 3
• Poses - put character in poses that convey various emotions. Examples.

Walkcycles

• Simple normal walk.
  Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 Example 4
• Run cycle.
  Example 1 Example 2
• Happy walk.
• Sad/Tired.
  Example 1
• Angry
  Example 1
• Injured leg
• Sneaking.
  Example 1
• Skipping.
  Example 1
• Personality walk.
  Example 1 Example 2
• Dog walkcycle . Walk/run/sneak/jump.
  Example 1 Example 2
• Flight Cycle
  Example 1

Basic body mechanics

• 180 degree turn.
• Jumping from point to point(Between poles/puddles/stones, hopscotch).
  Example 1 Example 2 Example 3
• Kick a ball.
  Example 1 Example 2

• Walk against heavy wind.
  Example 1

• Lift.
  Example 1

• Jump. (Over the gap, on/off the table.)
  Notes
  Example 1 Example 2 Example 3
• Push/Pull a heavy thing.
  Example 1
• Trying to open a sticky door.
  Example 1 Example 2
• Back flip.
  Example 1 Example 2
• Throwing a ball.
  Example 1 Example 2
• Climb over a wall.
  Example 1
• Basketball
  Example 1

Advanced body mechanics

• Parkour/Chase. Obstacle course. Acrobatics.
  Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 Example 4 Example 5
• Dance.
  Example 1
• Fight. Sword fight.
  Example 1

Basic acting:

• Pantomime. (Cooking, cleaning, studying. Winning a lottery, getting scared.)
  Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 Example 4 Example 5 Example 6
• Monologue. (One character, short. Movie quote.)
  Example 1 Example 2 Example 3

Advanced acting:

• Dialogue.
  Example 1 Example 2
• 11secondclub Competitions.
  Example 1

This is a collection of references for modeling good 3D character topology.

This is my tutorial demonstrating a simple way to model correct topology:

Face topology references