Some studies of underwater swimming. I used footage from YouTube as reference and Adobe Animate for animating.
The upper image is based on a video breaking down an underwater dolphin kick.
For the study below I initially tried to show the technique done by freediving long distance champions but the result was too awkward. I kept the hand movement but modified the legs to a dolphin kick, so now the model is swimming something like a butterfly stroke.
For future use- the first movement test is close in breaking down the swim cycle and is likely useful as reference. The second test helped me to understand the breast stroke, yet more mistakes have slipped in to this test cycle because I was using different references.
Adobe Animate is pretty great for this phase of doing quick tests. I used both regular and primitive shapes at first and then converted all parts to primitive shapes as Animate likes to merge regular shapes really quickly - this can bring unwanted results but looks like a time save after getting used to.