WalkCycles Revisited and the 3D

I decided to make a quick review of WalkCycles, why?
Well, I noticed I was spending too much time detailing figures, instead of focusing on the movement, which is the thing I'm trying to learn after all.

That's when I noticed that Richard Williams, the guy from the Animators Survival Kit, makes use of a very simple figure, one which almost looks like a stickman.

Here is my try, basically animating one of the excercises he talks about:

It is nothing fancy, just the pure walk, legs only. I did this one pretty quickly, in photoshop.
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And here is another one, which I added some arms and a dumb cushion at the up-contact, which makes it look wrong ¬¬.
But I wanted to try the forward-backward movement of the shoulders and hips, which, in a way, looks better than the past cycles where such movemen wasn't there at all.

The bad notes:
-The arms are quite boring...
-And the overall timing of the step (16f) is just slow.
The nice thing is that, again, I realized I can work on quick drawings that focus on movement, rather than wasting too much time making those fancy. That'd shall come later on.

The idea is that, if the movement is right, the animation will be, no matter it is a boring stick dude or a great designed character. 

And that makes me question: Which one is better? A bad character animated greatly, or a great character, beautifully designed and rendered, but animated terribly?

THE 3D ---

Oh my god Maya!!! Pandora's Box has been opened.

Yes, I finally decided to get into 3D, being careful not to be seduced by its averwhelming illusions and amazing ease. 

With the most traditional animation in mind, I jumped on my 3D package, willing to experience a new animation tool.

So I decided to make aaaaaanother walk cycle.

And here is my shot:

No IKs, no joints, no curves, no nothing. 

Just keyframes, polygons, transformation tools and timecharts, and the most important thing: animation theory (the stuff that comes in the books).

This first gif shows what may be called the blocking; keyframes that show the important positions of the character. In this case, the common parts of a walk: contact-down-passing-up-contact.

This second gif is the final animation. I inbetweened odds, that is, I keyframed as if I would be animating in 12's(twos), using autotangents at the last moment, letting the computer fill in one frame each. [1-2-3-4-5-6]

But well, it was not as bad as I imagined. in fact, it was more like stopmotion than anything. Taking one picture, then moving each tiny bit of the doll, then taking another shot, over and over again. Of course you have some advantages, like the doll doesn't move while it is manipulated, you can review your animation countless times, etc.
And that puts another question in my mind: Does stopmotion is done straightforward?

Anyways, that's all for now.
Thanks for reading! Have a nice day ^^