Evaluation

Overall I am pleased with how the final sequence turned out although there are some aspects of it that could certainly be improved.

The mesh looks detailed although lacking colour. The head that took so long to build fits well with the body but could have used some close up shots to show it off a bit more. The biggest challenge when modelling the head were the subtle tweaks and the use of Blenders sculpt tool as there were no strict guidelines here but I was pleased with the results. The late changes that were made to the legs were also well worth it as they suit the mesh far more although when animating it became clear that the thighs on my character were still not as large as those in the game. The hands could also have done with having some fingers rather than just a glove but this was not too important as there was not that much use of hands in any of the animations.

The hyakuretsu kyaku (fast kicks) animation went quite smoothly and resembled well the move from the game without the special effects. With the left leg stretched so high there were some crimping issues under the legs, however they could easily be hidden by the cloth that hangs down the front of Chun li. Aside from this the main difficulty was creating movement in the the torso so it was not static as the legs kicked. This was achieved with some small movements animated at offsets and some spine rotation.

The walkcycle animation flows nicely because of the subtle weighting in the torso and legs. The references and guidance used were really helpful for this. However, there is a slight clipping issue with the hands going through the cloth as they move behind the back. Issues such as this can even be seen in the Street Fighter game though and can be difficult to get rid of without making the movements seem too unnatural. There were no real crimping issues in the walkcycle as none of the bones are particularly stretched during this sequence.

The spinning bird kick animation was the most difficult of the three to animate well. The reason for this was partly that the main sequence is just the character flipped with rotations. To make it more interesting I added some body animations during the cycle but they are quite difficult to see. The trouble area sequence was the transition into and out of the move. It would have been difficult to key-frame this part in the action as the repeat function could no longer be used as Chun li would land and take off for every repeat. Instead, the blending function of the NLA editor was used, I adjusted it as best I could but the transition still looks quite rough. I also sped up the animation to match more closely the game which also helped hide the transitions.

Finally there are the stretch, bow and stance sequences. These actions all look decent but are not particularly long. The offset movements were used to make look more realistic and this worked well. These sequences were used mainly as transitional periods between the main three animations but could also be included as part of them.

There are plenty of ways the animations could be expanded on. Regarding the model, primarily the head could be completed with ears and Chun li's distinctive hair style and the whole body could then be textured with UV mapping to complete the character. Following this the hands could be given fingers so they could be animated separately. In terms of the animations the weight paining could be improved to reduce the crimping at some of the joints. Following this it would be nice to animate the rest of Chun Li's special moves from the street fighter games and just smooth out the existing animations, particularly the transition in and out of the spinning bird kick.