This is a case study documenting the creation of a 3D roundhouse kick attack animation in Maya. 

I will be using the free Shinobi rig created by Christoph Schoch and designed by Servane Altermatt:

https://thestoff.gumroad.com/l/gtneS?layout=profile

Originally, I was going to use the Baqir rig for this animation. However, I discovered that the rig was specifically created with space-switching in mind, which is a workflow that I'm not familiar with. I had trouble working with the rig, so as a result I decided to switch to the Shinobi rig, which is rigged more conventionally. 

Baqir Rig:

Shinobi Rig: 

Below is the reference video I will be using for this animation. 

For this animation, I wanted to try a different animation workflow. Normally, I work in a pose-to-pose workflow, where you create keyframes with the key poses of the characters. However, I wanted to try something called a layered animation workflow, where you animate one part of the body at a time instead of all at once. I'm following the workflow presented in this video below. (Although, instead of animating a cube for the COG motion, I decided to directly animate her COG controller.)

After getting Shinobi in an idle position, I focused slowly on her COG's (center of gravity) motion. I changed her legs to FK so they wouldn't stay in the exact same place while she moved forward. 

Next, I switched her legs back to IK, and did a rough pass of her legs. 

I then did another pass on the leg animation. I should probably move on at this point, but I really wanted to figure out her leg's timing first because it is the most important part of this kick attack animation. I haven't touched the upper half of her body at all at this point. 

Next, I did a pass on her chest, hips, and arms. This is how it looks. 

I think I've finally got the timing mostly down. The kick feels pretty satisfying, instead of too slow or too fast now. Time for the head, and a general pass over the body. 

Now Shinobi's head faces her target most of the time, instead of aimlessly spinning around with her body. I still think her torso animation looks a bit rough, so i'll keep working on it as I also animate her hair, ears, etc. 

Here, I focused first on animating Shinobi's ponytail. I also cleaned up her torso animation, and added more weight to when she lands, thanks to the suggestion of a classmate. It gives more "oomph" to the kick landing. Next, is to animate her ears and hair. 

Sweet. The ear and hair follow-through are pretty subtle, but they really add some life to the animation. 

Looking at it now, I realize that her scythe weapons clip into each other at the end after I adjusted her arms' animation. I have to rework the arms animation to make sure her weapons don't magically phase through each other. I'll fix this in the polish pass. 

In addition, I'll be cleaning up the arcs of the extremities (hands, feet, head, ponytail) and making small fine-tuning adjustments from here on out. 

Upon attempting to animate Shinobi's cloth around her legs, I realized that it would actually obstruct the silhouette of her kick. I think the kicking animation would be more clearly shown without the cloth in the way. So, because this rig allows me to turn off different accessories of the character, I just hid those parts. 

Now to do the final render. I added some light and shadow to make it look professional and ready to showcase in a demo reel.

Hooray! Looks pretty good. It's not perfect, I do think the arm movement could be stronger, and there are small things that could be fixed (For example, making the ear follow-through more exaggerated). But I successfully completed my goal of having a strong, polished animation to add to my demo reel.