Walk Cycles

This was my first attempt at a walk cycle using a wireframe armature. I found this really hard to do because the puppet kept falling off the rig, and it was generally very flimsy, however I think it turned out okay for my first attempt. The feedback was:

• the left leg was better than the right, as it had a nice kick to it
• the right leg needs one extra frame to make the kick for that leg more fluid
• the knees need to be brought up more, and then the leg needs to snap straight for the contact pose
• the foot needs to be consistantly rolling
• the character needs to be leaning into the walk a bit more

I wanted to have another go at a 3D one, but my stop motion puppet was un-animateable. Instead, I used Ducky's half-finished one as this was bigger and had thinner limbs:

I used Richard William's Animator's Survival Kit and used a 16 frame walk cycle for this one. I had a lot of fun doing this and I think it turned out pretty good. Thinking about all the elements that need to move in straight ahead animation was a bit tricky, but I feel that the movement is pretty fluid. This puppet was a lot better to work with as it was more stable.

To improve:

• The leg needs to snap out more and be straighter in the contact pose still
• The foot needs to roll more
• It's a little bit jerky so I need to be more careful when doing the inbetweens. Using the onion skin would help a lot

I then animated a 2D walk cycle of Beram. I ran out of time so wasn't able to finish the cleanup or add his crown and cape, however I got the main motion down. As I wanted it to be Beram's walk cycle rather than a generic one, I needed to tailor it towards his personality. This meant that it needed to be slower overall, and also be more sluggish. To achieve this, I added more inbetweens as Beram lifts his foot, and less for when he places it down to give the illusion that his legs feel heavy. I think this turned out well, however I think I should have added one more in between just before he places his foot down, to make the motion more fluid.

I think the arm movement is pretty good, as I only wanted a subtle movement, and the swing is very natural feeling.

The main areas I struggled with is the body and the head. I think they look too stiff and jerky, and I should have used a bit more squash for the body, and made the head bob more than it currently does.

Walk cycles are something I need to do a lot of practice on, and I'll probably try out a lot during summer.