Walking In Place

[voxac50]

Here is an attempt at a character walking in place. It's based on a 24 frame cycle, with frames 1 and 24 being the same position. It was all drawn in Anime Studio Pro, using smart bones and switch layers. The audio is a Final Cut Pro sound effect, speed adjusted.

[slowtiger]

Nice one. I like those clean lines a lot.

The upper body is a bit stiff. Notice how much the arms swing, but the shoulders don't move? The shoulders should turn a little bit, too.

With all loops and cycles you should be clear that you have a 24 frames loopp, so frames 1 and 25 are identical. If you include the identical frame into the cycle, you will get a pause in the fluid motion.

This is a kind of "no perspective" because both feet have the same height on the ground. This walk should work nicely on a non-perspective background. But if your BG has a perspective you may need to adjust one leg's height.

[voxac50]

Thanks for the helpful feedback. There's always room for improvement!

[Hoptoad]

Nice walk cycle.

With all loops and cycles you should be clear that you have a 24 frames loopp, so frames 1 and 25 are identical. If you include the identical frame into the cycle, you will get a pause in the fluid motion.

Slowtiger, what's the solution to avoiding identical frames in a loop?

[jahnocli]

There's something wrong with the proportions of the figure; below the waist she is almost twice the size of her upper body.

[slowtiger]

Hoptoad: Just do not include the identical frame in the cycle, that's all.

[Hoptoad]

Oh! That's much easier than what I was thinking of doing. Thanks.

[voxac50]

Here is a modified version of my original walk cycle. I made a few adjustments based on the helpful suggestions made after my original post. The walk is also a little slower, being based on a video I found of an actual person walking.
with no deadlines, I'm afraid it's possible to keep tweaking your work forever, and never being satisfied with the result. Realizing how ridiculous that sounds, I am now posting this.

[synthsin75]

I would tilt the belt and skirt to suggest hip swaying. And probably counter-tilt the shoulders to match.

[funksmaname]

I think you made a mistake with the arm swing, look at your original video it swings smoothly - the new one kind of stops in the middle of the cycle (is this the extra frame slowtiger suggested you remove?)

[lwaxana]

These walks look awesome! I guess my first question is what style of animation are you going for? I feel like the retro character style can be supported by a "stiff" animation style, like we're thinking of the body elements as graphics instead of simulating 3 dimensional forms. But If you want to go for a more traditional naturalistic animation style, the second piece works well. I agree with Synthsin; the first thing I would adjust is the skirt. The arm swing looks like it sticks in the middle because of the spacing on the poses. The spacing on the arm swing should be similar to a pendulum, slowing at each extreme pose as it changes directions. There is a useful image here: https://jamescunninghamap.files.wordpre ... ements.gif Then if you wanted to loosen it up even more you could animate the bend of the elbows, wrists, and ankles. But again, I think it looks great already and going really volumetric may not support your designs.

[voxac50]

I would say the style of animation I am going for would be like a limited TV style rather than full studio animation. I will try these suggestions.