Completed Walk and Run Cycles

After learning from my mistakes, and by applying a little appeal to the animation, I ended up with four walk and run cycles that I view as complete.

Female Run: After two failed attempts at creating a believable run cycle, I was very proud with this result. There is power and force in the swing of her arms and legs, and there’s still a lot of personality to go with it.

Sassy Female Walk: I was very pleased with the result of this walk cycle. I chose this model to animate with because of the accentuated hips, which would look more dramatic in the hip swings. I think I did a good job portraying the weight of the character along with a sassy personality.

Male Moonwalk: Initially made for a bit of fun, I actually ended up really liking this animation. Using myself, as I possess the ability to Moonwalk, and some Michael Jackson videos as a reference, I completed this simple cycle. I especially like the arc of the arms swinging.

Girl Skipping: As previously shown in the compilation post, I liked the very bouncy and very lightweight feel to this character

 

Trial and Error – A Compilation of Persistence

When it came to actually animating, I figured that the best way to achieve decent results was to try and fail often so I could learn from my mistakes and grow in knowledge and skill as I went along, both through peer feedback and through observation.

This wyvern walk was one of the first walk cycles I attempted, and it shows because it looked off-balanced and the weight was distributed strangely.

 

This was my first attempt at a human walk. There was no rotation in the hips and almost too much weight. The character appears very heavy for his light stature.

 

Ignoring the left arm, this walk cycle ended up being a little too bouncy with too much of a feminine curve to it.

 

I actually found myself liking this walk (almost skip) cycle a lot. I thought the weight and the swing was all very good. The only issue I had was the extreme swing of the entire body.

 

This walk cycle ended up being far too wiggly. The wiggling is almost aggressive.

 

This was my first attempt at a run cycle. It ended up looking like something out of Scoody Doo. The legs were also completely wrong.

 

Another attempted at portraying weight in an animation. This one ended up looking a bit too floating and light for a character of this mass.

 

For this walk I wanted to portay anger and focus. I thought the shapes were OK, though a little downplayed in the emotion.

A second attempt at a run cycle. I liked the shapes and energy in the legs, though the whole thing seemed a little slow, and a little more like a big leap rather than a run.

 

My first attempt a a 3D quadruped . All was going well until I realised that the rig had no controls to move the tail. The cycle was scrapped after that revelation.

Beginning the Walk Cycles and finding references

As someone who has been animating quadruped walk cycles for almost a decade, I assumed that biped and humanoid walk cycles would be fairly straightforward, and one would assume that recreating one of the first things we ever learn to do in our lives would be simple. It wasn’t. They’re a very mechanical process that accumulated into a simple looping animation. To begin, I looked at several tutorials for 2 Dimensional Walk Cycles:

 

I then turned to the Bible of Walk Cycles, the Animator’s Survival Kit, to gain further insight on the mechanics of walking.