The Animated Self: Choosing the Motions

Thinking about what kind of motions I want to animate, I've been considering what kind of motion I can actually do. I've realised I've never actually done any kind of motion other than a pendulum, a ball bouncing and a squishy toy jumping. So it made sense to me to start at the beginning and animate a walk cycle and a run cycle, as these seem pretty important. It will also allow me to work on my drawing skills, as I will be focusing upon the human form in motion.

That's the first two sequences sorted. To challenge myself I have been thinking of animating someone dancing, as they move around a lot and there's a huge opportunity to develop a number of the 12 principles of animation including ones such as overlapping action and follow through, which I have ha very little practice in. Having said this, I could focus one of my sequences solely on overlapping action and follow through. Why do I have so many choices to make?

Because I was struggling to come up with the remaining 2 motions I made a list of all the motions that I felt would benefit me the most when I came to animate them. I also tried to think of motions that weren't overly difficult, as I already have a lot of work to do with my other projects. And I came up with this.

After thinking about it for more time than I'd like to admit, I managed to come up with 5 different motions that I'd like to animate, 4 being 5 seconds long and 1 being 10 seconds long, as it would be a dance so I'd like to animate the motion for longer. I think I have made a good selection here that will allow me to explore motion in a number of ways and I will also be able to experiment with methods and materials and techniques as well. Now all I need are the reference videos.