WALK CYCLE ANIMATION
Progress Report
My idea was to animate a walk cycle, which is simple but unique. A young happy boy with big tummy and big hat, walks with full confident.
WHY ''WALK CYCLE" ?
Though walk has motion but still it is balanced. It has more chances to incorporate body mechanism and we can express emotions more effectively due to its slower speed and learn small tweaks which is ignored in complicated scenes.
MAIN IDEA AND OBJECTIVE
A boy with little big tummy wearing big hat walking with great confidence. Walk must be funnier to bring a smile on faces but mainly, observation, learning the detail body mechanics of walk cycle to make it realistic. focus more on technical part and developing skills other than just leg movement.
HOW I ANIMATED THE WALK CYCLE
I followed these 12 easy steps to animate this walk cycle:
1. Research and concept
2. Find a reference
1. Find a rig:
2. Create the contact position.
3. Create the down position.
4. Create the passing position.
5. Create the up position.
6. Refine the up-and-down weight.
7. Refine the side-to-side weight.
8. Refine the chest movement.
9. Add drag and lead, and follow to the arms.
10. Fix any knee popping.
11. Flap the feet.
12. Polish the walk. To get more idea in depth on each of these 12 steps.
RESEARCH AND CONCEPT
I have gone through many animated videos of walking characters, many online tutorials about "walk cycle" and gained a depth knowledge and inspiration to start the project. I have mentioned couple of inspiring links below which I found really helpful for this project and also some links, I have downloaded asset from.
There are many videos provided by my supervisor; helpful to understand the concepts, techniques, blocking poses, body mechanism and polishing etc.
Previously I had no knowledge as I was self-taught animator, I did lot failure attempts of walk cycle. But during workshop I created a walk animation which gives me a clear idea what I am doing and how I can improve.
You can see all videos in my blog
https://shrutiroybir.wixsite.com/3danimation/post/walk-cycle-and-run-cycle
But it is always good idea doing own research for better understanding to speed up the work.
External videos I found helpful:
-
How to Animate a Walk Cycle in Maya - Explained in 5 Minutes!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUYosS9QfOs
2. 12 easy steps to animate this walk cycle
https://www.pluralsight.com/blog/tutorials/12-steps-walk-cycle-animation
3. ALAN BECKER - Animating Walk Cycles
FIND A REFERNCE
I used this simple, clean and a unique walk with athlete body. I found it on Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/vq9A5FD8G5w?feature=oembed
I did not copy exact walk but it helped me to get an idea how the body mechanics work better and how other part of body get involve to perform an action or leg movement.
THE DYNAMIC "MEGOO RIG" FOR THE MAIN CHARACTER
Finally, I have found the exact character rig I was looking for and downloaded it from: bellow link.
Megoo V.2 Maya Rig for walk cycle created by Ali Mehdi from:
BODY MECHANISM AND POSTURE IN A WALK CYCLE
I found this video. There are 50 different falls which have been demonstrated in this video perfectly, which some how helped me to learn how your body mechanism and posture work while falling. https://youtu.be/8Rhimam6FgQ
I did practice falling scene during my workshop too when we created inter between two breakdown poses. I will use similar strategy for walk cycle project too.
OBSTICLE OR FUNNY TOUCH TO THE WALK CYCLE
I have done 2d walk cycle animation before and even during this course I have done 3d walk cycle and created falling scene in workshop,
But I wanted to learn the falling and hitting on surface and I was searching for similar videos on net. Luckily, during my class, we were analyzing swing analysis in a video of Moana movie on syncsketch.com. And, I found the exact scene I was looking for.
Note: Later, I decided to skip the funny part, even remove the stick character was holding in hand for now and focused on technicality of walk.
KEY POSES AND BLOCKING THE POSES
Finally, I created 9 main Key poses. There are Total 25 keys in a walk cycle. 1 to 13 which complete the first half cycle, contains 5 basic key poses. Every half cycle consists two contact poses, one down pose, one up pose and one passing pose, where 13th key pose is the common for both halves. In another half there will be same 5 key poses but with opposite side of leg as I have added in below picture.
CREATING BREAKDOWN POSES AND PROGRESS
Finally, This is the time to create breakdown poses.
I found couple of video which helped me a lot to create a walk cycle faster than before. And my breakdown poses are ready.
I could have added camera movement too, to make it dynamic and visible from different axis. But this time I decided to keep it as simple as possible. Finally, I completed the walk cycle successfully as I expected. I added the final video on top of this page, hope you like it, thanks.