OBJECTIVE: Demonstrate your ability to:

• Create a believable two-legged walk cycle
• Animate a solid drawing with correct timing and weight

DOCUMENTS (Right Click and Save As):

• The Walk Cycle Handout |  Rubric

BACKGROUND: A walk cycle  is a sequence of frames representing a (usually human, but not always) walking movement.  Walk cycles are important, because when a walking person appears in an animation,  the walk cycle can be looped over and over,  without having to animate each step again.  In the early 1900s, a great deal of time was spent trying to perfect the walk cycle.  Early animators spent a considerable amount of time figuring out the basic poses, timing and weight of a walk cycle.

ASSIGNMENT: Create a looping two-legged walk cycle of a character of your choice.  You may use the character from the handout below, but ensure that the principles of animation are accurate and your drawings are consistent.

THE WALK CYCLE: A walk cycle can be described by four distinct poses:

CONTACT, RECOIL, PASSING and HIGH POINT

These four poses and a couple of inbetween drawings constitute a walk cycle. The single most important frame of the four is the contact pose. Once you draw it you have already determined 80% of the rest of your walk. If you make a mistake on your contact pose, it can be very difficult to correct later on. Therefore: pay close attention now and save yourself a world of pain.

Here is the contact pose in front and side view.

When the right foot is forward, the right arm is back, and vice versa. This is called “counterpose”. This is how nature keeps everything in balance when you move: one side of the body “opposes” the other. Good animation has these “opposing actions” all the time. If animation seems weak or unnatural to you, it is frequently because it lack opposing action. You can think of a walk as a series of “falls”. The character propels himself forward by leaning into the walk as he moves forward. His trailing foot constantly swings forward to catch himself before he moves on to the next “fall” in the sequence. It shares many attributes with the bouncing ball in tutorial 1. Look at the front on view.

Now look at the recoil pose, the second main pose in the cycle.

This is the frame where the character impacts the ground. It is also the lowest point in the cycle. The characters arms are furthest from the body as a result of the force of hitting the ground. The front foot is fully in contact with the ground; the rear foot has just lifted up from it.

Note that the leading foot is directly beneath the body, supporting the weight above it. Too many beginners produce recoil poses where the foot is not beneath the body, but several inches ahead of it. Try to avoid this.

To keep things simple, let’s skip the passing pose…it’s closer to being an inbetween. Let’s look at the high point.

This is the highest point in the cycle. The character’s body is stretched to the maximum as he lifts his leading leg forward to reach the next contact position. The heel of the trailing foot is just beginning to leave the ground.

There are two ways to approach a walk cycle: in-place and across screen.

REQUIREMENTS:

• TRT must be at lease :10
• Must include contact, recoil, passing and high-point poses
• Replicate the in-place walk cycle
• Gradient background, character colored
  
• Opening credits, ending credits
• Music/Sound Effects
• P#_LastFirst_WalkCycle.mov

SAMPLES: