My Walk Cycle

This is my version of the basic walk cycle which we were set for homework. I decided I wanted to try animating a full character rather than just a pair of legs, since I wanted to apply weight and timing to the walk. I wanted the walk to be happy and a little bouncy, so I chose a young girl character, keeping her as simple as possible so as not to over complicate things with clothes and hair. I used this page from the Animator's Survival Kit as a reference for the foot movements, arm swing arcs and for the rise and fall of the head/body:


I also tried to make the hair bounce up and down a little with the steps as shown above. While the timing's not perfect, I'm still quite pleased with the result as she seems to walk quite smoothly and the bounce in her step does show. I drew the frames on paper first, then scanned them and imported them into Flash to animate them, which is why the background looks so grainy. I also had to overlap the images to make the walk cycle (since I drew her moving across the paper rather than walking on spot), which is why the line of the paper edge appears half way through.