Before this project I had never animated a run cycle before. I thought it might be easier than the walk cycle since it’s faster (and therefore it would be harder to spot errors without pausing) but I struggled with this one a little bit.  I looked for a new diagram of key poses to reference, and ended up finding another drawing by Richard Williams from his book series “The Animator’s Survival Kit”.

From this I saw how a run cycle should be “springier” than a walk cycle – the character crouches on the down pose to build energy, then jumps into the air on the up pose. The legs should also stretch further apart to show how the character is covering more distance. My reference video showed the same things. With a walk cycle one foot is always touching the ground, but with a run cycle the character shouldn’t touch the ground between the up and contact poses.

As with the walk cycle, I began by importing my casually-posed Jill rig and following along with the run cycle lecture we were given. Like before, I focused on the main joints at the arms and legs before editing the other areas of the rig. Since a run is a more exaggerated and involved motion than a walk, I also added some animation to the chest at this stage rather than leaving it to later. Still, everything at this point was very jerky and robotic; the animation had no flow or smoothness to it.

Next, I added a little more movement to other areas of the body. As my character ran I added a bit more bend to her elbows and exaggerated the twist of her torso a bit more using the chest control. I also edited the rotation of her legs – in the first pass, her legs were positioned a little forward from her hips, as if she were floating or sitting partially. I bent her legs back further to show where she was putting her weight.

With my run cycle I spent a lot of time in the graph editor, I found this was the best way to edit it. It took a lot of trial and error to get the cycle to look how I wanted it to, but the first step was to select each control and look at the shape of the graph. Initially the keyframes were placed unevenly on the graph, which caused a rough and janky motion. To allow the animation to loop I made the arcs somewhat symmetrical so that the first and last frames were identical and the arc had a smooth incline and decline. After every edit I made sure to watch back the animation to ensure I didn’t accidentally delete an important keyframe or break the rig somehow.

When the animation started to look a bit smoother I began adding more details. Jill’s arms stayed quite rigid at the elbows as she moved, and although this was accurate to the reference video I wanted to exaggerate her movements to give the animation some more personality. Rather than using the controllers directly, this time I tried editing the animation using the graph editor alone. Selecting an elbow, I chose the keyframe I wanted to edit and moved it on the graph to see which way it made the elbow bend, then positioned it how I wanted in time with the upper arm and leg keyframes. The elbows bent out when the opposite leg was farther back, then bent forward when the opposite leg was further forward.

I noticed that Jill’s feet clipped through the grid (or “floor”) when they slid backward, so I selected each foot and moved the offending keyframe a little closer to the centre of the graph. I also added the detail of her toes bending when the foot began to move off the ground since I observed this in my reference video too.

I exaggerated the bends in her hips and torso to add some more energy and weight to the animation, having them twist in time with each other on the frames between up and contact (when the character was in the air). Finally, I made sure the timing looked right compared to my reference. I moved keyframes using the graph and the dope sheet to ensure Jill didn’t look like she was weightless or floating (a common problem in animation with incorrect timing). When I was happy I exported as a play blast and saved the project.