This week, I decided to use a different approach to animate the run cycle, to see if there was an easier or quicker way to go about the process. I started with a stick figure running cycle, making sure to get simplified versions of the main poses down.
This is the reference I used. It comes from the book ‘Animator’s survival Kit’ by Richard Williams.
I then drew a body and head on top of the stick figure, which twisted around based on the position.
Following this I added arms; this was when I began to realise that this process wouldn’t work as well as intended. Adding the body meant that the stick figure arms were now too short, half of their length consumed by the torso I’d drawn. The poses also just weren’t matching up. So I used the stick figure as a rough guide and then went back to move all the arm frames so they better matched with the body.
The same process happened with the legs.
I decided the above cycle was too messy, and went over it all with one final layer, still tweaking poses to be clearer and smoother as I went.
The above video is the run cycle I submitted to Discord in order to get feedback. The suggestions I got included;
- reduce the turning of the head, we tend to look straight forward when we run
- slow down the cycle
- remove the odd lines on the back to make it look less like the front ribs
- fix one frame where the legs are reversed
This is the updated run cycle:
While this run cycle was much better, it still needed some changes. The head is still turning too much and too unevenly – the man looks away from the camera for longer than he looks toward it, making the head seem like it is doing an odd turn-and-a-half. I corrected the cycle again and redrew the features:
This run cycle turned out well, but I used poor methods to get to the final product which hindered my progress and meant I had to go back and redo parts. The method I used for the first walk cycle served me well and will be the method I continue using for 2D walk/run cycles in the future – examples below.