No. 91, Woody Woodpecker Model Revealed

The twenty-year-old 3D walk cycle of Woody Woodpecker that I showed you in my last post, number 90, was not only done with early 3D software; it was also done without the benefit of many tools and tricks that the 3D animators of the present day take for granted.

A frame capture from my Woody walk cycle in 3D.

First of all, there wasn't much that was flexible. The hands, the feet, the topknot of feathers, remain rigid all through the cycle. Most obvious, if you look for it, is that the feet do not bend or flex at all. As stiff as a pair of wooden shoes, when Woody rolls forward on them, they just stand up on their toes until he lifts them and brings them forward. Then they slap suddenly down as the forward foot takes the weight.

Neither do the hips move. The torso is just a cartoon pear-shape with the legs stuck inside.  In fact, there are no bones or attempt at any skeletal structure at all.  The arms and legs do bend, but the hands only look good because I made use of secondary and follow through action simply by rotating them appropriately at the wrists. To make him look jaunty I also nodded the head a bit from side to side as he walked.

In short, I made up for limitations in the model's structure by using a few items from my bag of animator's tools. With good posing and timing, together with the follow-through and secondary action of the hands, I was able to get a fairly attractive walk, despite its admitted shortcomings.