General question about walkcycles

[mouthuvmine]

I'm wondering what most people do, process wise, for making walk cycles. I won't deny it, I copied (no paintovers though, I'm proud) MrColossal's free walkcycles before, for my game, but it's not helping me at all in a project I'm working on with a friend. Is sketching everything out a common practice, or does eveyone just KNOW where the legs should go next. LoL. I'm so stuck.

[Dualnames]

I use SSH walk cycle generator...

[scotch]

If you search for "walk cycle" on google images you'll see some examples of the basic poses you should start with. Once you have those right you can go in and smooth out the animation with more frames, but good keyframes is the most important thing. Animators know them off by heart because walking is such a common thing. There's no shame in using a reference like that, but we could probably do with less paintovers of existing animations.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

The way I approach animations is by tweening.  I start with an initial pose (say the character is going to jump) and then I draw the final frame of the animation (where he lands), and then I go to the frame in between the two and draw that (the character in mid air).  After that it's just a matter of drawing the frames on either side of the tweens until you have a pleasing result.  It also gives you a clear idea where the animation is going so you know where the action ends.

[mouthuvmine]

That all helps alot! I've been trying out pencil sketches at work for some ideas, but like you guys have said, I think I'm trying to start at the beginning and end at the end, and he looks like his knees are broken, and his armpits itch (which issss kinda funny). Once I get somethin workable I'll post in the CL, cause I am going to need it. Thanks!

[InCreator]

Walking around in room extremely slowly and sketching down leg positions have helped me. Main problem with mostly used walkcycles in games is that they're too energetic: I mean, people don't really wave their hands crazily around when walking and don't take so large steps. This applies to MrColossal's walkcycles too.

Easiest way to get walkcycle right is make a sketchy animation with stickman, and give feet different color. Stickman is quite easy to edit so you'll find suitable walkcycle quickly.

ProgZmax proved that good basic walkcycle won't need more than 6 frames, of which 3 are copy of first 3, with simply another foot. Adding extra 2 frames will make it perfect - well-made 8 frame walkcycle will usually work for ANY character unless it's really tricky and cartoony one. Another very good thing for learning is cartoons: I looked at some Family Guy episodes frame-by-frame and it's quite strange way how they achieve so fluid motion with really low frame count.

As ProgZ said here, first 3 states must be drawn first: The start, the end, and the middle. Then add the states between those.

It's quite easy actually, once you've made 5-10 walkcycles in your life.

[Buckethead]

I had many looks at this site:

http://www.human-anatomy-for-artist.com/

I must warn you they have alot of nudity.

But they have shots of everything. It helped me loads to look at the walk cycles there.