Walk Cycle Animation

This animation was drawn on paper using a lightbox. Although this is my favorite way of working, I chose to create my other animations for this project digitally. This is simply due to the time consuming nature of this style, however as this piece is only a twelve frame loop, time was not an issue. The element of this animation I am most happy with is the secondary motion of the drawstrings on the character's jacket - which add a nice bouncy rhythm to the walk - and the way his excessively long shoes flop and drag as the toes remain on the floor during the cross-over of the legs, giving a very stylised look to the feet. Upon reflection however I think more attention could have been be paid to the arm movements, which sometimes appear to swing back too fast/with too few inbetweens. I produced several line-tests (See below finished video for my last line-test) over the course of which these arm movements were improved, however I don't feel I could have perfected them without redrawing every frame. Also, the filming of the piece could have been more accurate had I used a peg-bar to register each frame. As with my last piece, I decided to record some quick sound effects to accompany the animation - here I simply recorded myself walking in front of the mic wearing hard shoes, lining up the steps in Premier Pro later. In hindsight the steps could have been synchronised much better by recording the steps in time to a metronome set to the speed of the animation rather than syncing in post-production. Both videos below can be played in 1080p HD.

Above: Finished Walk Cycle Animation

Above: Linetest for Walk Cycle