Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Animating a Walk Cycle

The walk cycle is one of the most important learning concepts in animation--and also one of the most technically difficult, because it requires so much attention to the movement of opposing limbs.

However difficult, though, if you can learn to master a walk cycle then you can animate just about anything. There are many types of walk cycles, and you can vary the motion to match your character or his/her mood; you can do bouncy walks, shuffling walks, casual slouches. But the first and simplest is the standard upright walk, viewed from the side--and that's what we're going to attack in simplified form today.

You can cover the cycle of a full stride in 8 frames.


Here is a walking cycle Flash Tutorial.
Walking Cycle Tutorial


Here is a tutorial that criticizes the "Walking Cycle":
April Peter, Animator 
She has a good argument why the walking cycle is not the best way to learn.

April offers some advice:




  • Never stop thinking about who your character is.
  •  Each walk should be different to suite the weight, gait, strength, body type and attitude of the character. 
  • After you've finished the basic structure, you don't have to keep the keys of all the transformations on the same frames. Each separate rotation or translation can have a different timing.
  • Don't obsess about ending up with identical graphs for each step. Achieving perfect mathematics and achieving a good animation usually aren't the same thing.
  • In fact, try to dirty the walk up. For example, place the feet in a slightly different place every time. Play with the rotations of the torso, head or arms.
  • 1 comment:

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