The Message

Walk Cycles and Walking with Meaning
This is another brief that I have been given for this term! I am very excited about this one!

"You are required to practice through linear studies characters that walk on the spot. Your characters should not just walk but walk with attitude! Try to convey meaning to why your characters move the way they so. What is the message behind their behaviour that an audience should read? 

You are then required to use your drawings in another way; the character can walk forward into, through and out of the scene while the background remains static. Once you have drawn a walk on the same plane, try making a character move in perspective. Continue to convey meaning behind movement."

I have done a couple of walk cycles before but have only touched on it. Will be good to study it in depth!

For the last life drawing session at uni yesterday we did look at the walk cycle, just a normal walk - I will upload them later. 

So first I decided to have a look in my lovely book 'The Animators Survival Kit' by Richard Williams and see what he had to say about walk cycles. I came across his 'angry walk' and so decided to follow what he did and have a go. This is the completed animation...

I was very impressed with the outcome! 

For the angry walk he says "This is the kind of thing Art Babbit did all his life- making impossible moves look convincing and believable. He'd say, "Be a little bit truthful...""

I'll show you what he means

This is one of the frames that I used, as you can see the arms are in a natural position but look at the back leg! The author described this as a 'broken leg'. I was very doubtful about this when drawing the frames out but its actually really effective. This is the magic of animation!

And as you can see here the front arm is also 'broken'! 

Overall I feel that this was successful experiment/attempt and I learnt that not every frame has to be realistic, to just experiment to find out what works and what doesn't and to not be afraid to exaggerate!

This was a good lesson to learn and I'm going to try some more walk cycles in this book!