As we knew we needed an idle animation for the character to fall into at points, we set about creating one we could all use to base our animations upon. The idle would be a cyclic animation.
Cyclic animations are, as the name suggests, animations that cycle meaning the start and end frames are usually the same (or they blend into each other nicely). This is especially useful in games where players control what animation plays by their inputs. For example, the player model could be doing a cyclic walk animation when moving forward but when the player hits the jump key, the walk needs to stop and instead play the jump animation and transition back into the walk animation when they hit the floor again.
We couldn't get a good base idle without a reference so I offered to pose while photos were taken so we could better pose the character. These were taken from various angles to better position the idle. We then made an overlay of the reference to see the pose clearer.
Cyclic animations are, as the name suggests, animations that cycle meaning the start and end frames are usually the same (or they blend into each other nicely). This is especially useful in games where players control what animation plays by their inputs. For example, the player model could be doing a cyclic walk animation when moving forward but when the player hits the jump key, the walk needs to stop and instead play the jump animation and transition back into the walk animation when they hit the floor again.
We couldn't get a good base idle without a reference so I offered to pose while photos were taken so we could better pose the character. These were taken from various angles to better position the idle. We then made an overlay of the reference to see the pose clearer.
Using the references we posed the Morpheus Rig into position and gave a simple animation of him breathing.
Here we added a little flair by making him alert by raising his hands up and looking around for threats. This is the extended idle which, in games, would be swapped every now and again instead of the idle to create some interest in the character.