Foot placement method/tutorial: APPROVED BY JOHN

I'm always having trouble with foot placement, and Nev's ground level tutorial works a little for me, but not much. I figured out some ways to make it easier. It's very helpful for me, so I decided to share it with you guys.

Note: This tutorial is very specific for noobs, so hang in there non-noobs!!!

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Foot placement: It's basically what it says, but I'll tell you anyway if your a noob at pivot. Foot placement, in animation, is how you keep the person's/animal's/any thing else with feet in the same place. Good foot placement would be a stickman's feet in exactly the same place on the floor or wall. Bad foot placement is when the person's or animal's feet shake all over the place on the floor or wall each frame. The same concept is used for hands, like if someone was doing a handstand.

Good example:


Bad example:


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What it should be used for: This method is better used for making still, non-moving camera animations. It makes a better acuracy for foot placement if the animation is still, but you can try it with 3D and dynamic camera at your own risk.

Making the stick: Okay, first off, you need to make a very, VERY simple stick. This is basically is pretty much all we'll need, besides the stickman.

Step 1: Open the Stick Figure Builder by clicking File>Create Figure Type.
Step 2: In the Stick Figure Builder, click Options>Edit Mode.
Step 3: Click and hold on the red node and bring it down to the middle of the yellow node.
Step 4: Move your mouse over to the size arrow (pointing up) and click it until the size is about 20.
Step 5: Make the segment static.
Step 6: Save the stick as whatever you like.

It should look like this:


And there!! You have your super simple stick.

Animating: Now lets put that stick to use.

Step 1: Put two of the sticks we just made into animation, along with a stickman and a floor.
Step 2: Make the stick we just made into the back and make it white.
Step 3: Position the stickman as if he's standing (or whatever you want him to do).
Step 4: Get the sticks we just made and put them behind the foot nodes.
Step 5: Start animating, but keep the stickman's foot nodes in front of foot placement stick.

If you did it correctly, the stickman's feet should be perfectly in the same place, like so:

This also works if the stickman has actual feet, just use both of the sticks behind each node on the foot.

Well, that's all I have.
I may put more methods up.

Hope it helps!