Body Mechanics 02 by Jorge Vigara

Tired of floaty characters? This course gets you off bouncing balls and onto a full character rig. You will work through walk cycles, jumps, and dance bits to finally sell weight and balance in Maya.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• Animate grounded walk cycles with clear weight shifts and clean contacts
• Plan and execute jumps with proper anticipation, airtime, and landing
• Break down dance sequences into rhythm, timing, and body coordination
• Move from simple shapes to full-body rig control without losing solidity
• Fix common floaty animation issues with spacing and arcs

✅ Requirements

• Skills: Basic familiarity with Maya animation tools, keyframes and Graph Editor
• Tools: Autodesk Maya, 3-button mouse
• Hardware: Dedicated GPU, minimum 16GB RAM for smooth viewport playback

📝 Description

This is not theory. You jump straight into Autodesk Maya and start posing a full rig. The idea is simple: if you can control the hips and chest, you can control weight. Jorge walks you through that shift from shape-based exercises to real character performance.

We spend a lot of time on walk cycles because they expose everything. Foot sliding, even spacing, stiff upper body — you fix it here. You will learn to read timing and spacing in the Graph Editor and use it to make steps feel heavy instead of floaty.

Then we push it further with jumps and dance. Jumps teach you anticipation and follow-through. Dance teaches you rhythm and isolation. Both force you to keep balance while the whole body is moving, which is exactly what studios look for in a body mechanics shot.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• Intermediate animators stuck with weightless, floaty character movement
• Students coming from bouncing ball / flour sack exercises ready for full rigs

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

Jorge Vigara is a working character animator focused on gameplay and body mechanics. He spends his days pushing weight, physicality, and clear posing in production shots, and teaches the same no-nonsense workflow he uses at work — block solid, check your arcs, and polish only what the camera sees.

🏁 Final Result

• A polished body mechanics reel piece featuring a walk cycle, a jump, and a short dance sequence animated on a full character rig in Maya.