Most notes taken out of book: Walks - The animator's survival kit (Richard Williams)
Positions:
2 main positions: Contact+Passing
A walk can technically work just with these two positions.
Contact: When both feet are firmly on the ground
Passing: when one foot is passing through to get to the front: passing position on its own can completely change how a walk looks (crucial pose)
Others: Up + down
This makes the walk seem more natural, even though in real life, these are incredibly subtle.
Up: The highest point of the cycle, right before the foot lands and the other foot pushes off
Down: The lowest point, where you feel the most weight
You do not have to follow these rules to a T, slight variations are where you make interesting walk cycles.
General notes:
- A walk can tell a lot about the personality of a character.
- A very good animation practise: to get a sense of a characters personality and also just for general practise because there is so many kinds you can do
- Most people animate walks on 16s/8s as it is easier to divide up than 12s (avg real life cycle is 12)
- The less frames the faster the walk - tells the audience what they're doing/who they are
- The heel is the lead part: the foot follows along, remember the foot has delayed movement compared to the leg
- Weight shifts from one foot to another : makes the body slightly lean to one side, pass pos is mainly straight leaning slightly to other side (for faster walks/runs less shift)
Keep in mind while animating
- Experiment, don't stick to these exact poses
- Don't be afraid to do things that aren't exact replicas of reality, you can bend and twist limbs in loads of different ways that you can't do in real life which adds more character to a walk
- Trying acting out a walk in real life, for ideas and a better understanding of what you're trying to do
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