Having completed my vanilla walk cycle, now came the fun part; moving beyond just making my animation technically correct, to giving it personality and character which would add interest, and hopefully elicit an emotional response in the audience.
I’d learned that human motion contains a wealth of information about the actions, intentions, emotions, social significance, and personality traits of a person (Troje, 2002), but with so many options available, what would I choose? I’d completed a ‘double bounce’ and ‘sneak’ cycle during class workshops, but excited at the prospect of creating something completely different, I set about researching various options.
After seeing the opening animation in ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ below, I considered creating a ‘strut,’ and had gone as far as researching how this signature walk could be achieved, but decided that as this is a confident, proud walk that shows a person knows who they are and aren’t afraid to show it, while this would be perfect for a bespoke character in a 2D animation, it would feel unbecoming in the ‘Rain’ character.
Source: Linkedin.com, 2016
I therefore looked online for inspiration, and found these live action and animated resources, which show a wide variety of character walks, particularly useful.
Source: YouTube, 2018
Source: YouTube, 2022a
Source: YouTube, 2023
However, still undecided, and having read that personality can be created by variations to the basic walk cycle (Williams, 2012), I thought back to my female vanilla walk cycle and how this could be adapted. Interestingly, I’d see reference to a catwalk model, and how differently they walk being made by Richard Williams in ‘The Animator’s Survival Kit,’ so went about gathering references relating to this.
Source: Williams, 2001
Tyla Source: YouTube, 2024
Natasha Poly Source: Reddit, 2023
Beyonce Source: Tenor, 2016
Liking the style and weight of the walk, and the atypical, exaggerated movement of the supermodels where unusually the hips are elevated as the model steps forward as opposed to being raised on the leg supporting the weight, I set about amending my vanilla walk cycle to replicate this assertive, dramatized walk.
Tutor feedback was that although there was good posing with a lot of nice shapes, excellent shoulders and shoulder sway, and the weight between the hips and shoulders good, unfortunately replicating the extreme stretch in the stride forward, and the crossover movement of the walk, was breaking the rig and causing the knees to pop.
Front View
Side View
So sadly, as I felt I couldn’t exactly replicate the walk due to rig constraints, I decided to do something completely different instead. Thinking back to my references above, I remembered seeing a zombie walk in all three that had caught my attention, and although choosing to animate this character meant starting my walk cycle with personality from scratch, I felt it would be well worth it, for the additional scope it would allow.
From the following references, I realised that not only could I exaggerate the motion of the faster forward step and catch, but by ‘breaking’ the knee joint, I could add interest by emphasising the trailing foot being slowly dragged forward at an unnatural angle. Creating curvature in the spine, dropping the left shoulder and having the character lean forward would also allow me to ‘push’ the pose and show understanding of the weight of the character. Also, by creating overlapping action and different timing in the arms as they dangled down, I could add further asymmetry to make the walk more interesting, and finally have fun creating an ‘undead,’ open-mouthed, unblinking expression, and by purposely posing one hand in a claw-like fashion.
Source: YouTube, 2019
Source: YouTube, 2016
Source: YouTube, 2015
Source: YouTube, 2022b
Drawn to the motion capture figure second from the right in the YouTube 2022b reference above, as real-world references are a particularly useful tool to help understand how the body moves through space, and this a more complicated walk cycle, I had a family member act out this character, and recorded this from three different aspects.
Front View
Side View
Back View
Recording and reviewing this footage with the limbs in the appropriate rotations and heights, as well as often striking the pose myself, helped me to have a more in-depth understanding of the body mechanics, weight distribution and movement that I could then translate into my animation, with my initial attempt shown below:
Front View
Side View
Tutor feedback highlighted that while the animation was a good start for such a complicated cycle, and that there were good sudden snaps of weight, in general the movement felt too floaty, and at times the centre of gravity wasn’t accurate. Also, although there was great overlap to the upper body, and an excellent curve to the back, the foot timing needed some adjustment, with the weight needing to stay over the right leg a little longer, and the left foot move forward a little faster to catch the weight of the body drop. Also, the arms were very stiff, and to stop them from floating around, they could be either pulled closer to be body, or some more more purposeful overlap added. The acting in my real-world reference was also a little too enthusiastic with the arms having a lot of swing and counter swing, and the rotation a little too high and extreme for the limited body movement, but this could be rectified by adjusting the Bezier curves in the graph editor.
Side View – Frame 8
Side View – Frame 9
Side View – Frame 13
Side View – Frame 15
Side View – Frame 30
Side View – Frame 36
After adjusting the centre of gravity where required, and making all of the other necessary changes, the only further tutor feedback was for me to smooth the arm movements a little more, and to reduce the height of the right arm on frame 9 in my final zombie walk cycle below:
Front View
Perspective View
Side View
For a beginner, animating such a unique walk proved challenging but fun, and certainly took more time and effort than simply adjusting my existing walk cycle, but as I feel I’ve been successful in capturing the required unnatural, lumbering motion in the snap of the forward step, the weight drop ,and the slower drag of the trailing foot, I believe that the additional work needed to create this walk cycle provided a great learning experience.
References:
Linkedin.com (2016). Don’t Just Walk: Sneak, Strut and Stomp: Dermot O’Connor. [online]. [Accessed: 12 October 2024].
Reddit (2023). What Model has the Best Walk of All Time. [online}. [Accessed: 13 October 2024].
Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/popculturechat/comments/16i1c8t/what_model_has_the_best_walk_of_all_time/?rdt=64161
Tenor (2016). Beyonce Crazy in Love GIF. [online]. [Accessed 13 October 2024].
Available at: https://tenor.com/view/beyonce-crazy-in-love-walk-fierce-hair-flip-gif-5341801
Troje, N.F. (2002). Decomposing Biological Motion: A Framework for Analysis and Synthesis of Human Gait Patterns. Journal of Vision, 2:371-387. [online]. [Accessed: 12 October 2024].
Available at: https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2192503
YouTube (2012). Character Walks – Getting Personality into a Walk Cycle – Alexander Williams 2012. [online]. [Accessed: 12 October 2024].
YouTube (2015). Zombie Walk Cycle – Louis-Rémi Guilbault. [online]. [Accessed: 13 October 2024].
YouTube (2016). Bony Zombie Walk Cycle – Rafael “Aethylan” Polaczek. [online]. [Accessed: 13 October 2024].
YouTube (2018). 100 Different Ways to Walk by Kevin Parry (Animation Reference with Music) – 3h4k. [online]. [Accessed: 12 October 2024].
YouTube (2019). Zombie Walk Animation: Deniz Canbulut. [online]. [Accessed: 13 October 2024].
YouTube (2022a). 16 WALK CYCLES – DIFFERENT ATTITUDES – I Want to Be an Animator – Animation Tutorials. {online]. [Accessed: 12 October 2024].
YouTube (2022b). Trailer Zombie Animations Pack (Motion Cast#07 – Vol1): MotionCast – Loic57: [online]. [Accessed: 13 October 2024].
YouTube (2023). 15 Walk Cycles Different Attitude Student Work Credit for the concept study goes to Chiara Porri – STARBLAST ANIMATION INCUBATION CENTER. [online]. [Accessed: 12 October 2024].
YouTube (2024). Tyla Performing PUSH 2 START & Water Live from the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show 2024. [online]. [Accessed: 13 October 2024].