DYNAMICS - WALK CYCLE

MONDAY, 8TH OF OCTOBER, 2018

Today's session focused on the traditional walk cycle. In animation, a walk cycle is created to give animators a sense of the character in movement, as they walk on the spot. 

(credit: Richard Williams, "The Animator's Survival Kit")

Our tutor for the day showed us a premade set of frames in Photoshop, and demonstrated what each type of frame was for.

First, there's the contact frame (see frames 1, 9 and 17 of above image). These are the positions when the feet will be furthest apart from each other. It's also when a foot which previously was airborne first hits the ground.

In between contacts is passing positions (see frames 5 and 13). These are the motions inbetween two extremes, or in this case, contact frames. In walk cycles, it usually involves one straightened out leg in full contact with the ground, and one raised, lightly bent leg.

Alternating in between contacts and passing positions are the highs and lows (see frames 3 & 11 for lows, and frames 7 & 15 for highs). These are when the whole body moves down or up in accordance to what the legs are doing. When legs are both bent down, the body moves downward accordingly, as does moving up when the legs are more straightened out.

And then filling in the gaps are the inbetweens (every even numbered frame). These are, simply enough, meant to fill in the gaps between the two frames it's sandwiched between to make the movement smoother and more convincing.

When we were first presented with this task, I won't deny, I found it a bit daunting. While I've tried walk cycles before, they weren't necessarily great. They staggered and gave a very rough feel, and I worried my previous inexperience would hinder this attempt. Even when drawing out each frame, with a reliable reference on the screen at the front, I felt like when I line tested, it would turn out bad and I'd have to try again.

As mentioned, I followed along with the guide at the front. While I needed the reference for the contacts, passings and highs & lows, I felt confident enough with the inbetweens to do them myself. I would occasionally flick through my drawings, trying to get some semblance of just what it would look like in motion, I couldn't get a good idea of it.

Eventually, I managed to line test and I was extremely happy with the results! Where I had worried that the animation would look bad while drawing the frames, putting them all together brought out a smooth, convincing walk cycle!

Upon presenting it to the tutor to get some feedback, I was told it was a good cycle. The only feedback I got was the head seemed to get a little bit of a double bounce on the high, but that was due to my more rough linework and the tutor, as they put it, "being nitpicky".

Once the main walk cycle was complete, we moved onto getting the arms to move. We were only really given the first contact position to work with, alongside being advised that it's the same basic principle as the legs when it comes to how to position the other frames.

I was much more confident with this step, since I have a better idea of how arms work than legs. I decided to offset the arms by one frame; for example, where the extreme for the legs would be frame 1, the arms' extreme would be frame 2. I figured this would make a less robotic movement, since it doesn't look like a deliberate effort to move both arms and legs at the same time.

I'm happy with how the arm animation turned out, having the figure seem like they're doing a "happy march", for lack of a better term.

I think that so far, this has been my favourite of the animation tutorials we've been through! This is where we crossed the threshold into the more character driven animation, which is the stuff I find exciting and fun to make! There are things I would've done differently for this session, however. I think gaining a better understanding of how legs work and go together is essential... perhaps life drawing or studying up on it will help most. Or it could be as simple as observation!

The next step to take the walk cycle is, quite literally, step 2. I need to follow through on making a fully looping walk cycle, instead of looping the same single step. While repeating the one step gives the illusion of a full cycle, the legs changing colours (used while animating to remind myself which leg is which) takes away from that.