“The Walk Cycle” Animation Practice
The animation lessons posted on the CARE Now website are designed and developed to get more people interested and involved in the artform known as animation. Most people know about animation from watching cartoons on television as children. However, not many know how the cartoons are made. Even though there are a lot of people who really like watching animated feature films and cartoons such as those produced by The Walt Disney Company and Pixar Animation Studios, they do not know what goes into making those films and TV shows. These lessons provide some insight into the animation process.
The word Animator is defined as a person who makes animated films. Animators are in fact artists who work in many capacities in the filmmaking process to develop finished projects such as television shows, feature films, and also video games. They are visual artists who draw, paint, and/or photograph images that they then put together to be flipped or changed successively very fast so that the images that you see seem to move. The finished product when put together gives the illusion of movement which is animation.
Animation requires putting together many, many, many, MANY images in successive order and then changing them very fast. Your understanding of how to make a flip book gives you an indication of how this is done. In fact, cartoons require thousands of drawings just to produce a complete 30-minute show. Can you imagine how many drawings are necessary to make an animated feature film? This can help you to understand the reason animated films take so many years to complete. They require many, many artists and many, many animators who make many, many, MANY drawings. But the end result is so very rewarding and visually entertaining. It is for these reasons that animators have developed and teach common techniques to help make the animation process easier and more efficient. One such technique that animators use when they work is called a walk cycle.
Walk Cycle
A Walk Cycle consists of a series of illustrated frames that depict the various stages of a character's walking motion. When these frames are played in sequence, they create the appearance of smooth, continuous movement. The images that you see on this page are examples of Walk Cycles. They show images of the movements of a character in different stages of those movements.
The Walk Cycle is a fundamental animation technique used so that the characters move according to the natural laws of physics making the animation believable and realistic. Animators can also efficiently depict walking without having to animate each step individually, saving time and effort. It is important to note that the Walk Cycle is a type of movement cycle used by animators. Other movement cycles include Run cycles, Jump cycles, and Swim or Flight cycles.
A typical walk cycle can be broken down into several key poses, often referred to as keyframes. The four main poses/frames include: Contact Position: The moment when one foot makes contact with the ground while the other foot is in the air. This is the starting and ending point of the cycle. Recoil (Down): The weight shifts onto the front foot, causing the hips to lower slightly as the knee bends to absorb the impact. Passing Position: As the back leg passes the front leg, the character shifts their weight from one foot to the other, creating a sense of movement. High Point: The character reaches the highest point in their stride, with both feet off the ground momentarily before the cycle repeats.
While a traditional walk cycle may consist of around 8 frames, the number can vary depending on the style and requirements of the animation. For smoother movements, especially in video games, a walk cycle might include 12 or more frames. The images below are poses/frames of a walk cycle. If you look carefully, you can see that each image is different. The four images on the top row show movement with the right/back leg while the four images on the bottom show movement with the left/front leg. You can tell the difference because one leg of the pants is slightly lighter than the other one. The largest image on the far right is just a standing pose. The character is not moving. This image can be used to begin and end the walk cycle.
Your Assignment
For this activity, I am going to show you how to use clip art images found on the internet to animate a character. As was stated previously, animators use the walk cycle technique to animate characters but most of them draw the characters themselves in at least four different poses. In this animation activity, I am going to show you how to use clip art images of characters in four significant poses to simulate the movement of a character. The clip art images I will use are png images so they have a transparent background. This will make it possible to use them with a background setting image of my choice. For this activity, I have chosen to use a house in the neighborhood of Woodcrest, Maryland, which is the fictional setting of the comic strip and cartoon series The Boondocks. I will use Microsoft PowerPoint to complete this practice animation but you can use any presentation software that will allow you to duplicate slides and then have them to advance automatically.
Instructions
1. Use the walk cycle shown below to complete your practice animation.
2. Resize and separate each pose in the walk cycle so that you can use them one at a time in each frame. Use the crop tool for this. 3. Insert the background image below on the first PowerPoint slide in your presentation. Resize it so that it covers the entire slide.
4. (This is an optional suggestion.) Change the color of the image to Grayscale it you would like to make it easier to see your character in a contrasting color. 5. Place the first image in the walk cycle on the slide at the far left side so that it looks like the character is beginning to take a walk along the sidewalk in front of the house.
6. Duplicate the first slide. 7. On what is now the second slide, place the second pose/frame of the character in a way that shows him moving towards making the next step. You will do this by lining up the front foot of the new image on top of the front foot from the previous image. See the following photo as an example.
8. Then, delete the first image so that only the second image is visible. See the following photo for an example of this.
9. Duplicate the second slide. 10. Continue this process for each slide using each successive pose/frame until you have moved the character from one side of the sidewalk to the other. Save your presentation as a video and post it to YouTube if you have a YouTube account. You may also share it with family members and friends via email and they can view it on a media player such as Windows Media Player.
The following videos show my examples of this activity. The first one is a slower version so you can see each pose/frame. On the Transitions tab, I set the Duration to 00:01 and where it says Advance Slide, I removed the check mark in the box for On Mouse Click and instead selected After and set it to 00:01:00.
The following video is set to advance faster. On the Transitions tab, set the Duration to 00:01 and where it says Advance Slide, remove the check mark in the box for On Mouse Click, and instead select After and set it to 00:00:00.
I completed this practice animation in 44 slides. However, after I finished, I realized what most experienced animators probably knew from the very beginning. I should have used at least eight (8) poses/frames instead of just four (4). The reason for this is that by only using four, my character is only moving one side of his body. A complete cycle has at least eight (8) poses/frames! The following video is an example of a walk cycle that I completed some months ago which shows all of the poses/frames. Although there is not background image, you are able to see each different pose – the character uses both legs (you can see how they alternate) and he swings his arms in a realistic manner.