These Cycles were made for Walking
Walk cycles!!!! It’s like a mind puzzle based around which leg goes in front of which.
‘The walk cycle saga’ has been a surprisingly difficult exercise for me technically, it felt like I really had to have the highest level of focus on the techniques in these three exercises, and that there is no way I could have done them without Steve’s notes and my own further research into walk cycles.
One of the things I’ve noticed is that I tend to want to move straight into stylised walks before cementing the basics; so for example I was really focused on the fact that my character was a child, and that I wanted her to be ‘trudging’, which led me to not fully understanding the leg formation and weight distribution within animating for on the spot walk cycles.
Steve specified that especially with the animal run, I had chosen an animal (jaguar) that was too complicated for a first attempt, oops! A consistent difficulty with the animal animation has been the multiple moving parts, for example the head and tail of my quad walk dog don’t feel natural. I think I am happy with the legs though, and I am proud of the overall design and execution! I often feel that although animators opinions are important for technicality, my priority is always the opinions of the ‘audience’, and on my socials, as well as with my peers, people seemed to receive it well.
With the mood walk however, I did find it came more naturally, as I felt I aimed for something more dynamic; especially in the ‘stomping’ walk.
Something I have learned about myself during these first weeks on the course is that I really work better when I have a character starting point. For example, animating the mood walk and having my pre-existing character design sheets made the process a lot more seamless. This relates to the production line in industry, so I suppose I am not surprised, but going forward I would like to continue using my ‘moody pumpkin teen’ for the animation exercises. I want to look more into the jaguar run, because I think the way they move is really beautiful, and to study that and animate it would be beneficial to my practise too.