Round and Round and....

As a kid I vaguely remember watching walk/run cycles in some of the old Looney Tunes cartoons my dad used to (and still does) play on 'cycle' every weekend. I didn't realise exactly what they were at the time and their function as a 'time/money' saver, nor did I quite know how difficult they are to master. My lecturer, Steve Roberts commenced week 5 by introducing them to us as one of the toughest, but most vital skill to have in animation. If you can animate a successful walk cycle, you can animate almost anything. The reason for this, is because it is a cycle, we see the same movement over and over, so any mistakes will eventually jump out like a sore thumb. Walk/run cycles are particularly difficult as well, because the human eye is so attuned to successful walking, it will pick up on even the most minor detail, especially with a semi-realistic character.

Once again we all set to the task by performing and filming ourselves for some reference material. I thought a limp would be a good experiment and had an idea about a little boy injured in a football clash, limping away dejectedly. A first I thought this exercise would be a relatively easy task....it wasn't! I spent quite some time studying the limp movement, it was different to the usual walk cycle in the way that the two main strides are completely different. So the limp walk cycle never really saw the same movement twice (on opposite legs), which was also pretty painful when trying to get the feet to move on the same spot. Anyhow, after a whole load of 'leg work (bad pun, I know!)' I managed to come up with what I think is a pretty damn successful walk cycle. If I was to go back and change anything, it would be the left hand, which doesn't move as fluidly as the other hand.

I also had a play around with a walk cycle on Flash. It was actually a bit easier to master the movement on Flash than on paper, because you could draw out each frame in sequence and move them on top of each other to make them move on the spot. Once you have the movement mastered, you can then use the rough drawing as a guide layer to build the character on top. I have to admit that I enjoy drawing on paper much more than I enjoy drawing in Flash, which tends to lend itself better to really flat 2 dimensional designs; however with a bit more practice I'm sure there will be whole other world of interesting character designs that I'll be able to explore. I think I've managed to get the movement alright in my flash walk cycle; however, there are still quite a few things I'd like to tweak, but might save it for the next walk cycle experimentation! I've include an example of the skeleton layer and the final character built over it.