Learning Walk Cycles

I was in the studio 5:30 – 8:30 with Christina Nerland and the rest of Group A 🙂

I had watched animations from Steve beforehand, and read through the pdf he had sent about the exercise

When we arrived, Christina talked us through what goes into an animated walk cycle. She explained that it’s essentially 4 key frames, but really it’s 2 key frames copied. A few of us were surprised by how few key frames were needed. She also explained that it’s good to have the leg and arm furthest from the viewer a darker shade or colour, to differentiate it from the arm and leg that are closer.

When I went to animate my own practise walk-cycle, I did this. When I copied the key frames, I re-drew the arms in a different colour, on a different layer, to show depth.

Although I am happy with my first rough walk cycle, I believe it took me much, much longer than was necessary, because I was too ambitious with it. The layers actually made it much more confusing, and I found, when doing in-betweens, that I had accidentally drawn different limbs in the same layer.

Christina advised me later that when I was just doing my roughs, I should do it all in one layer. I think I learned a lot from this one rough walk cycle!!

Here he is:

While in the studio, me and the rest of Group A all practised doing different walks around the room with Christina. It was a lot of fun and helped us learn the way weight is held and shifted in different walks.

Then me and Vai went outside and filmed each other doing different walks. It’s funny how unaware people are of their own normal walk, and of how they look when they do other types of walk. When I tried a confident walk or a sneaky walk for example, I had to forget about what my limbs were really doing in order to record an effective one.. I think this is because people aren’t very conscious of what their bodies are doing when they walk, because we start walking from the age of ~1, some before that.

I think a good mixture of physically doing a walk and observing it will help me to animate it better.