Zeus Runcycle Workflow

Ok here is a workflow diagram in the style of my Athena Workflow [link] for my recent deviation; Zeus Runcycle [link]

Pretty straight forward really… Firstly I built his face and attitude by looking at old skool movie stars like Rock Hudson and Brando, also the great economy of the legendary batman animated artist Bruce Timm.

Then I looked at Greek pottery and stock photo runners to get a sense of the key poses for the motion. Once I had a rough concept illustration of an run approved by the client I found a great Preston Blair runcycle which I slapped into illustratior and animated over by making changes to how his stock parts slide over each other in 2D… That’s generally all flash animation is, just sliding shapes… I import all these as shapes into flash and eventually movie clip them up and add motion tweens, being carefull to set the correct registration point on frame 1...

Next is the timing of the run, where you pause and where you hurry. The whole thing takes less than a second 13 frames for each stride so 26 frames to complete right and left and generally I set the fps to 30 as its abit smoother than 24 and gives you a few extra frames to play with in getting timings right… I thought as he is the God of Gods he would spend only a brief moment on the ground and a seemingly hovering in the air with each stride, I pushed this until I arrived at a godly lope. Also the arm/ head movement really is the key to a good run; I exaggerated until it broke then pulled it back a notch…

Hope you Deviants enjoy