When in college we had to do a walk cycle animation as one of our first projects so I had prior experience in completing this. I have become slightly rusty and lacked the fundamentals of a basic walk cycle and after having a chat with Aodhan decided to re-draw it.

Feedback from Aodhan:

• It lacks the bounce fluidity when contact is made with the ground
• Advised it is probably easier to re-do the walk cycle to add this in (Definitely agree to this)

I decided to redraw my walk cycle as I lacked the up and down motion in my initial animation. I have a copy of Richard Williams: “The Animator’s Survival Kit” and it was refreshing to go back to this book and read through it for some valuable forgotten knowledge and tips! I didn’t want to focus too much on creating a character animation and drew it in a mannikin format to make sure I followed through with form and pose.  I also used YouTube videos for references. A channel on YouTube called “Moderndayjames” also has a video up that I found so useful and full of helpful tips!

I read through this and made sure I had it open beside me when drawing out my animation.

Rough sketched animation – more cartoony to look at leg form and the up/down motion.

I animated on 8 frames and and then rendered it out at 12fps on 2s!

After going back and re-doing this animation I focused a lot on references to make sure I got the up/down motion.

I also had a quick sketch through of adding a bag to a character just to focus on the movement of a prop.

References:

Richard Williams: “The Animator’s Survival Kit”

I looked at a lot of hiking videos to reference the movement of a backpack while walking.