Creating a sharp ninja jumping strike

We thought to share a bit more of our animation experience with you. So here is a work-in-progress and a final animation of our ninja fighter.

A work in progress was already a very good animation, but we felt that it lacked ninja style: 

❌The take-off pose is not stretched enough

❌No fixed in-flight pose after the strike

❌No fixation after landing 

❌The animation is too smooth

And here are the changes that you can see in the final animation:

✔️Now ninja’s body takes a more active part in the take-off and you can see how he stretches up making the jump.

✔️After striking, he maintains a ninja pose with his legs tucked in for as long as possible, before stretching them out to land.

✔️As he lands, he stays in the landing pose for a few moments before getting up.

✔️If you pay attention to the swords after the landing, in the first animation they move in an arc to get to the idle pose. In the final version they move sharper, get fixed during the landing and move to idle in a separate move. And here's what we got:

Before

After

All that created a result that we wanted to achieve - a sharp, collected ninja making a strike.