Walk cycle Reseach

Most sane people have a fear of animating walk cycles. Many events are happening at the same time, and it can seem overwhelming. A single mistake on your first drawing can wreck the rest of the scene. However, the process can be broken down into a series of steps which can go some distance in simplifying the process.

A walk cycle can be described by four distinct poses:

CONTACT, RECOIL, PASSING and HIGH-POINT.

These four poses and a couple of inbetween drawings constitute a walk cycle. The single most important frame of the four is the contact pose. Once you draw it you have already determined 80% of the rest of your walk. If you make a mistake on your contact pose, it can be very difficult to correct later on. Therefore: pay close attention now and save yourself a world of pain.
www.idleworm.com/how/anm/02w/walk1.shtml

I watch a really amazing DVD which is a digital version of the Animators Survival Kit by Richard Williams. It really is a great watch, he makes it so easy, all you have to do is break it down into the main positions, once you have these, you work on the timing. You can then create walks with anger, or sadness, walks with a purpose, walks of different genders, beliefs, the list is ENDLESS. We are all programmes to look and read body language, no matter what background or what language you speak, this is one language that we can all read. You can tell by facial expressions, the frowns, eyes, smiles, all these act as clues to tell us how someone is feeling. It is the same for a walk cycle, the height of the pass pose, the length of the stride, the bend at the contact; all these factors give us visual language and can  really make a walk interesting.

There are so many things to bare in mind - the angles of the hips, shoulders, arms. The follow through of the arms, are the rigid? are they floppy? 

Here are links to my first character walk cycles i made in the first part of this course. Its important for me to look back on them and see what i could do better, what looks wrong, as im sure now, i could see some things that dont look right.

Initial character walk cycle

Final character walk cycle