Feeble Librarian Walkcycle

[Corby]

Hello! So without being able to find a good reference on how an old man with a can would walk, here is my best attempt at a walkcycle for an old librarian.

I thought before I make this thing worse, I'd see what some expert eyes can suggest!

If anyone wants to give it a shot, here is the .psd if that makes it easier:

http://www.corbydesigns.com/librarian_side.psd



Any help/pointers would be greatly appreciated!   I think the problem is primarily his leg movement.


Here he is in his chair to see how his clothes look.

[Jim Reed]

Aye, it's good, but his hands swing with his legs. Switch that and you'll be OK.
eg. Left hand goes forward when the left leg goes back, not the other way around.

[Mr Flibble]

Isn't the arm/leg thing okay since he's walking with a cane?

[Kweepa]

He looks like he's jiving!
He'd probably move a lot slower if he was bent over that much. I'd recommend having the feet not move while he brings the cane forward, then have him take a step.

[Jim Reed]

Mr Flibble: nope, you swing the cane to support your bad leg, then you move it (the bad leg), or it wouldn't be of much use the other way.

[Corby]

I think this one is much better. Thanks for the help so far! Anything else I can improve?

[Calin Leafshade]

Hmm, I'm not an animator in any sense but:

His front leg and cane should assume the floor is flat I think, so the cane and his feet should both move along a horizontal line (with the back foot obviously being on a slightly higher line).

[InCreator]

1) Lose ass movement. It looks really strange
2) De-sync cane movement with right foot. Limping person puts cane front first, makes it support the body and THEN moves that foot forward. This way, cane acts as third foot and character always has two "feet" front or back on both body sides (just like he's standing) while he moves foot that left behind.


Like this: Whatever state walking is in: character actually always has 2 foot on the ground, with walking stick acting as missing foot

Or maybe I'm wrong sounds reasonable though

http://physicaltherapy.about.com/od/devicesandorthotics/qt/WalkingwaCane.htm

In your walkcycle - cane looks more like accessory, not something to support walking.

3) Body movement is somewhat unbelieveable too. I'd redo the walkcycle and result would probably be with much less body movement and simpler overall. I say: make full walkcycle first, then add hand and a cane. This workflow would produce much better results.

Since you're using Photoshop, it's easy since you can put cane hand onto separate layer.
But for overall walkcycle making, I suggest using a sprite sheet instead of image-per layer. Of course, you can successfully mix both! On a sprite sheet, you can easily see how walkcycle progresses and compare it to image before and after. Turning layers on and off will show that also, but it's still easy to miss changes in color and so on.

Plus, it's much easier to visualize the animation without actually having to put it together into GIF file or export to AGS. Just look here. Can you FEEL how this character moves just by looking at image strips?

AGS supports tiled sprite import too - which is exactly for sprite sheets. You define frame size and number of frames and bam, much quicker than importing every frame separately.

4) What's going on with jacket switching colors at back?

[Corby]

Thanks for the advice InCreator and Calin, I'll see what I can come up with shortly!