Creating My Walk/Run Cycles

Although I have been practicing in Toon Boom, for this assignment I was allowed to use the program I was most comfortable in which was Clip Studio Paint.

Vanilla Walk

First I went ahead and gathered some references for a Vanilla walk(including creating my own reference), since I tend to add a lot of personality to my walks I knew I was going to struggle to capture the more subtle rotations in the hips ( I tend to over-exaggerate these a lot). From these references I was able to take note of the similar characteristics, and then keep these in mind when I start to key out my walk, these include; slight rotation of shoulders and hips both switching after the ‘Down’ pose; arm swinging back is shallower than the front swing; medium span of the feet; subtle L/R sway of head, not up and down; Feet stay close to ground, even when passing; Frames ease in/out of the contact/down pose- not lingering on the passing pose. I think the hand drag in the Pixar Walk cycle is really affective in creating this casual tone so I will be incorporating this in my walk as well.

This was my roughed pass of the walk, there was something bothering me about it, but I couldn’t place what it was, so before moving on I sent this out for some feedback. I sent this out to the lecturers as well as this discord server I am in that has people currently working in the animation industry.

After receiving some feedback, I realised that my walk was actually on 3’s, so I adjusted the frames accordingly to 2’s before making my corrections. I slowed down the walk by adding in-betweens that eased in and out of the contact pose, and I went and added on some more drag onto the arms,  although in some frames I think they come across as too forceful. I went and shared this for some feedback once more before I started refining these movements and adding on some character design.

Pushing back the arm helped the sense of swing feel even on both sides, and then I felt comfortable starting to add character to my block out. I started with the feet first, since these are the most important part of the walk, and I thought it would be nice to add some ankle rotation on this. Now while working on this I thought I had a reference but I don’t think I used one which is mainly why it ended up so exaggerated. I had sent this for feedback and Aodhan was right in saying that it made the top and bottom halves of the walk feel like they were from two different animations, since the references I had collected were for a more conservative walk.

I removed the ankle twisting and worked on adding the character elements to the block-out. I decided that since my walk was quite flowy, I could pair this up with some complimentary secondary/overlapping action, so I decided to add a tail and some ears, I gave them a basic t-shirt and some shorts since I wanted the arm/leg movements to read well, I also went and added some thigh squish on the down pose to highlight the weight change.

I went and finished the ear and tail movement,  this took a bit of experimentation with how I wanted the ears to move but I ended up on this flick type motion that complimented the head tilt. I also delayed the tail frames so it all didn’t flow from the same timing. Then sent it back for one last feedback pass and I just had a couple issues to fix.

This was what my final animation ended up like, there is definitely a lot more adjustments I could make, like the foot still having some swing in it despite various attempts to change this but I decided that this was good enough for the time that I had and I made a casual, flowy walk which was my goal coming into this.

Personality Walk

For my personality walk I decided to go for a sultry, feminine walk.

I went ahead and gathered references that had good hip rotation and stiffer arm movements, as well as taking a lot of inspiration from Jessica Rabbit’s character. Looking at all of these I picked out the attributes that I liked to keep in mind while I worked, which included; smaller size steps; feet are placed in front each-other on contact; torso leaned back; stiffer arm movement/shallow swing; stiffer neck; larger hip swings and taller steps. I also took a note of how the planted hand highlights the movements of the hips, as well as how the hooded eyes and the tight clothing really sell this characterised walk.

I actually found that I struggled to create this walk, starting out I went through making these small adjustments and it ended up making these clunky movements. This ended up teaching me a good lesson, sometimes it is better to just take a step back and restart the whole animation, I don’t know why I was being so precious when it was all just rough passes I was working on. I went back to my references, and sat down to plan this movement out traditionally, before moving them over to CSP.

Then I went ahead and in-betweened my base, as well as started to add my character elements. I decided to have my character be a cat, since this fed into the slow, sensual walk that I was going for as well as letting me include some interesting action with the tail. For the clothes I really liked the dress with the slit that Jessica Rabbit had, but I thought the cloth would get in the way of my nice leg movements so I decided for this short, backless dress. I also thought the fringe added some mystery, paired with a cigarette to lean into this femme fatale look.

When inbetweening I decided to really delay the foot coming off of the ground, I think this worked well in my references to create this slow but targeted walk, before having the foot flick out before the contact. I really like how the hip movement turned out with this, but I’m not sure if the swing on the ankles works too well, I wanted the feet to come down on the same line.

I then got some feedback from Aodhan and like I suspected the swing was a bit too intense and one of my legs actually came down too much but these were both very easy fixes.

I went and applied this feedback, as well as continuing to add in my character elements. I based the tail loosely off the movements from the video below, but I tweaked these so that it would come up into the shape of a heart just to push forward this idea of lustfulness.

I started to notice a lot of inconsistencies as I worked, like the left foot having this awkward movement as it lifted, the right hand getting smaller on the back swing as well as a lot of line jittery-ness. I fixed these the best I could before sending this off for final feedback. It was from this that I found the reason the left leg looked so awkward was because of my spacing, it makes a far too big jump in one frame compared to how I had tweened the rest of the body.

I went ahead and adjusted the leg movement, and it was then that I checked how the right leg and left leg were tweened to see if there were any other inconsistencies like this. I found some throughout the passing position and decided to adjust these, and the movement was looking smoother.

I’m pretty happy with how this walk turned out, although I did have to miss out on adding the smoke affect I wanted due to time constraints, as well as some of the lines needing some clean up. I got away with having the tail movement be on 4s while the rest of the body was on 2s which did save me some time. I think if I were to redo this particular walk I would follow the toe dragging forward like in the Jessica Rabbit reference, or change up the keys a bit more as I played it pretty safe.

Vanilla Run

For my vanilla run I decided I wanted to capture a casual style run so I went and gathered both animated and real life reference for this. Some things I’m taking note of here is the slight lean of the spine; the rotation in the shoulders compared to the hips; stiffer arcs in the arms (no drag/follow through as they are tensed up) and how the fist leads the rest of the arm; the amount of up/down body movement; wide reaching steps; and how the back foot kicks up and out on contact.

Starting with my base I decided to go for a male character this time, and I wanted to go for a slightly exaggerated realistic run ( mainly seen in the arms extending far forward). This was a lot easier to do than the walks, since there was a lot less frames, and its harder to spot inconsistencies because each frame isn’t held for long. Then I got some feedback, this was where I learnt another important thing about runs, because the frames don’t last long you need each side to have a different silhouette just so it doesn’t look like certain elements don’t move (this can also become more obvious when you add details to help differentiate elements).

These were both easy adjustments since I worked on vector layers, so I applied the feedback and just this slight change made the run look more believable. Then I started adding some character,  I decided to make him a sporty wolf with shorts and a tank-top to match (which would highlight the arm and leg movements) I also thought that having things like the fur, tank-top and ears would help with showing the weight change and momentum in the run. I made some notes to myself before sending this off for some feedback.

I was told that what I had was all good, but I noticed that the cheek fur was making it not loop well, (at this point I was being pretty nit-picky, because compared to my other animations this had the least character/secondary action), so I adjusted this a bit and changed the tank top slight as well. I could probably work on this a lot longer, the more I look the more issues I find but it doesn’t need to be perfect so I left it be.

Personality Run

I gathered a lot of references from Rory Alderton, he does a really good job of tailoring movements to each character’s personality and these are all gathered from his work on League of Legends. Then I also looked elsewhere for different takes on what I was imagining. All together from these references I am taking note of the quick contact-push off compared to how long the character stays in the air; how their hands reach out to help balance the character/ the use of prop that follows the body movement; the head is still quite stiff compared to the body/leg movement; more ‘springyness’ can be implied with a stretch of the leg of contact before the body drops; and that secondary/overlapping action works to really sell any side to side motion.

In particular I really liked the sense of magic from my references. I thought it would be interesting to incorporate elements like a hat, and a wand and play around with their sense of weight in contrast to my character. I also liked the idea of the bare feet and having some sort of visual effect to create a childish whimsy to the run. The main goal was to create this floaty in air moment, which I thought worked well to create a more stylised, magical run.

 

I first roughed out my movements, with the main goal of holding the in-air pose to get that floaty feel, and then I decided to similarly hold the hat in the air as well, but it was looking a little awkward with how I had the head angled. I think I was able to create a believable robe with the cloth clinging to the leg making contact and being a bit looser on the hind leg. To try get that springy feel I decided to really compress the body on the down position before reaching on the up, (you can see this mostly in the neck), and then I grounded the arms with some magically implied elements. Then I went and got some feedback on this, seen in red below.

I found it pretty hard to adjust to add in this extra frame, but it was definitely needed to push this whimsical tone I wanted to go for, and by compressing the body it added a bit of bounce and fun to the run. I was also able to start adding more cloth secondary action with the drape-y sleeves. I also changed how the hat moved, so that it was more affected by gravity and added some subtle squash/stretch to this in time with the body movement, and with the tail I used a similar movement to one of my references, dragging opposite to the bodies movement. I didn’t really like how the back of the staff moved so I wanted to adjust this a bit better.

 

I changed the wand to have a more circular movement on the back, and started to adjust some elements like the face and the sleeve to be more consistent. I also decided that the way I had the floor breaking wasn’t fitting the mood I was going for so I changed this, I had a couple ideas on how to do this and sent them to my peers for some feedback and it was actually Alyssa who came up with the idea of having the front movement match the back, almost like a treadmill. I also added added some black to differentiate the underside of the hat, and added a shine effect on the ribbon of the hat by flooding it with black and erasing out this effect.

I do think I could have really pushed this run a lot more than I did stylistically, there was a lot more L/R movement I could have incorporated as well as pushing that squash and stretch to make it feel more fun, but I’m still happy with the final result I ended up with.

Conclusion

I have gained a better understanding of bodily mechanics and how to construct both walks and runs from a 2D perspective, so my next goal will be to try transfer these skills to 3D. My biggest issues for this assignment were the time constraints as well as battling my own perfectionism, I found myself constantly going back and looking at my animations and picking out issues and this isn’t something that you can afford when working in the industry, nothing is perfect and especially since I am still learning I shouldn’t expect what I make to be on the same level as professionals. I found that I struggle a lot when trying to keep things consistent, especially with the linework so this is an area that I will be practicing more in.

Despite all the stress I had a lot of fun and am looking forward to the next assignment.

Reference List

Collection of all the videos that I referenced, since some above are clipped and edited together: