This week we learnt how to create a human walk cycle in Adobe Flash.
Here's a basic idea of what we did (I'll go into more detail below)
Here's a basic idea of what we did (I'll go into more detail below)
The picture above shows the different 'poses' that make up a human walk cycle. They are; contact, down, passing, up, and contact again to repeat the cycle - ours was created within a thirteen frame time span (contact on frame 1, down on frame 4, passing on frame 7, up on frame 10, and contact again on frame 13).
*Note: The picture above is spaced out in order to show the different poses more clearly, when actually animating our walk cycle it looked more like the image below (when onion skin was on, of course :P)
In the end we only had to animate one walk cycle - we copied and pasted all of the animated frames, and then moved them into the correct position using the Edit Multiple Frames tool. This allowed my little stick man to walk all the way across the stage (for 75 frames) without me having to animate any more than the 13 frames it took to initially create the walk cycle.
We also learnt just how important the positioning of the arms in a walk cycle is! It gives the character movement and consequently makes the animation look more realistic. While animating our characters arms we learnt that when the right foot is forward, the right should be back, and vice versa (this keeps the character balanced). Additionally, we learnt about the two most exaggerated arm positions in the walk cycle - they are in the 'down' pose and the passing 'pose'. The down frame is the frame where the character impacts the ground and is the lowest point in the cycle, hence the characters arms are furthest from the body as a result of the force of hitting the ground; and in the passing frame the arms should be straight down by the characters side with no movement whatsoever.
Page 102 - 215 in the Animator's Survival Kit was very helpful - good as a visual reference for various types of walks, etc.
Top things to remember from this week
- To avoid foot sliding issues you must ensure that the heel of the front foot always line up between the contact, down and passing positions, and the toe of the back foot line up between the passing, up, and contact positions
- Counterpose - when animating arms in a human walk cycle always remember that when the right foot is forward, the right arm is back, and vice versa
- Inbetweeners - they are people hired by animation companies whose sole purpose is to animate the blank frames in between the main frames...how exciting! :P
- By using the Edit Multiple Frames tool you can shift/edit multiple frames at once (that will DEFINITELY come in handy)
- If you're going to copy and paste your walk cycle MAKE SURE that the two contact frames are the same, otherwise it looks crazy
- The head and body must not stay level during the walk cycle - the ups and downs are exaggerated to convey weight (and the shift of that weight)
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