For my first attempt at animating a walk cycle I wanted to give the impression of a lively, happy character. Beneath is a brief sketch outline what I wanted for the sequence.
Research
Richard Williams' ' The Animators Survival Kit' (2001), has an excellent point of breaking up the key poses of a walk cycle, how to shift weight and carry personality into every step. Organising movements into passing, contact, up and down poses help me greatly when making the animation, and served as my guideline for the sequence.
Animation
Below is an example of what my animation looked like once I had organised all the key poses. I am satisfied with the animation itself, however it lacks personality. I want it to appear cheerful and upbeat, so I will make further modifications.
With the main key frames set, I could continue to manipulate the joints of the model to give more personality and life to the model. Below is the finished outcome.
I enjoyed learning process of this cycle and I feel that by utilising squash and stretch, as well as over extending the characters limbs made the movements of the character more ‘bouncy’ and ‘alive’, I succeeded in giving the the impression of an upbeat and peppy walk cycle.
One of the main things I learned when animating this cycle was the benefit of splining in the graph editor, which help the fluidity of movement carry over from one frame to the next.
References
The Animator’s Survival Kit (2001) Robert Williams
The Illusion of Life (1981) Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston
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