Backflip Maya animation

I began making this animation by planning out the rough key frames of the character for every 4 frames, this helped me to get a better idea of what to do once i had opened Maya. In Maya once i had opened my rigged model that I was using I changed the amount of frames that the animation would be made in to 40 and selected the first keyframe.

To make this animation I used IK (Inverse Kinematics), this means when controlling a rigged character and their limbs you dont have to use Forward Kinematics. Forward kinematics mean that if you are moving a characters leg you have to control the "Root" first, this means moving the hip before the knee and moving the knee before the foot etc.

Inverse Kinematics means that you can control the character and their limbs by moving any part of them, for instance moving the finger will move the hand and the hand will move the elbow etc. The use of Inverse Kinematics allows for much quicker and easier creation of animations but there are good uses for forward kinematics because it can be much more accurate and therefore realistic.

After fitting the position and poses of the character to the key frames that i planned out i ended up with a somewhat finished yet clunky animation of a backflip. I smoothed the character and opened up the graph editor to smooth out the inclines and declines to make the animation seem more natural. Once i was happy with the animation I playblasted it and uploaded it, Here is the link:

https://vimeo.com/203298705