Animation 102: Basic Walk (Part II) Walk Cycle 2D

Mar 17, 2017 Third exercise: OBSERVE, TRANSLATE, ANIMATE 3 step walk (Not allowed any character or personality in the walk). Before I started my walk cycle I watched this video from Alan Becker:

I then recorded some reference footage of myself trying to recreate an uncharacterised walk through space, I did recorded this at different angles to help myself observe the movement that could be translated to the animation.

I drew out a bar sheet to provide a basic outline for my walk. It was hard to convey two actions happening independently from each other. Hopefully this will translate well enough for my reading.

I've looked to Richard Williams as a guide to this task. I've found his information on walk cycles really helpful and insightful on the subject.

Through using his book as I guide I created a layer of stick men that track the initial contact poses and passing positions,

I have added a few positions for the stopping step at the end.

I then added arms into the equation and played all of the frames back.

I then drew a fleshed-out body over the top of the stickman.

However this still left me with flat outlines that looked to blocky.

I decided that I had to take this animation further in order to achieve true dynamism. I decided to draw in the style that my course leader had recommended as being effective... which was my own style:

(the drawings here have dynamism within the lines because I had focused on pen pressure) The only problem with this is that it is hard to be consistent with this drawing style within animation.

I began to trace around my block-lined character and drew in a bit of weight and follow through action with the hair and trouser legs.

The animation seemed to be missing something. Upon review my course leader told me that I had to draw even more in between frames. This was a tedious task but I'm glad that I have managed to effectively create a bounce in the walk and there's a sense of weight and follow through action within the character.

I am pleased with my final animation. This is definitely a style that I want to remain with for the rest of the module. for the rest of my 2D animation tasks, they take way longer than the stop motion animations but I feel this is more geared towards what I want to do in the industry and I'm actaully beginning to become proud of the end results.