Sunday, 12 January 2014

Kick combination

For kicks I wanted to do a quick combination involving a fake or off guard snap kick which then leads into a Muay –thai kick shown in the links below.

Human Weapon (Muay Thai, Ninjutsu & Silat)-(0-34secs)

Muay Thai Kick : Sport Science "Hardest Kick" (3.09 – 3.43)


The next step is to try and mimic this movement and include the fake kick to catch an opponent off guard. I have taken video reference of myself performing this combination to get an understanding of how the body performs these kicks which will give me a good understanding when animating the model.  

To perform this movement I kicked out front this could be used to distract the enemy by making them flinch or a simple distracting and by doing this move it sets me up for the kick. The second kick uses power generated from the waist, by giving that twist the foot gains momentum to throw at the opponent. Extra force is added from the left arm as it throws the weight over the body, at the same time the balancing foot does a twist generating a lot of force while the right hand keeps up a guard protecting the face.

Front snap kick
After looking over the captured reference footage I then moved on to getting the key movements of the kicks. The rig will be posed in a ready combat stance. Next I set the key poses I needed along the time line which I would go back and adjust later. Here are the key poses to the kicks.

Pose 1 neutral position

Pose 2 step preparing for front kick

Pose 3 front kick

Pose 4 landing/stepping forward to prepare for second kick

Pose 5 side kick

Pose 6 neutral position

These where the key poses I had planed out, here is a quick play blast to see what it looks like so far.


looking over the animation I found that there was something missing such as maybe an obstacle the rig could have in contact with as it seemed strange to kick and stop halfway to land back in neutral position. In fact it’s not possible to stop your foot with that kind of force behind you. So what I did to make it seem more realistic was put a pole object to show that he fakes the first kick and comes in contact with the pole on the second kick.
By putting in an object it helped guide me to see where I can plant the foot and it also showed that I was over extending the leg making it appear too straight for the type of kick I wanted to appear.



After I had implemented the changes to the kick and with the added pole it really gave a sense of kicking an object and not thin air. I think this makes it more realistic than my last attempt. Here is what it looks like without the pole


With the pole in place I feel more relieved about the animation. if I was to do another kick I might have had it break the pole I perhaps show more force in the impact. I’m pleased with the timing and the way the movement has turned out.

Finishd version with the pole in place to give it a more realistic feel.







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