Walk Cycle

01 Animating a walk is one of the hardest things to get right.

It’s a process of falling over but catching yourself just in time. If we don’t put our foot forward then we could fall flat on our face, we are going through a series of controlled falls.

We lean forward with our upper bodies and throw out a leg just in time to catch ourselves. The slower we walk, the easier it is to keep our balance.

Each arm moves in co-ordination with the opposite leg, this helps us to balance.

As we dip down gravity is doing some of the work, our arms are at their widest point.

02 We’re less than a centimetre from stubbing our toe each time we take a step, we lift our foot as little as possible.

As we rise up, we slow down

Foot glides down heel first for a soft landing.

All walks are different; no two people in the world walk the same. When actors are trying to get into character they try to work out how he/ she walk. You can usually recognise someone’s walk even if you can’t see them clearly.

03 There is a lot of information about somebody in their walk and we can read it instantly. One thing to look for is how much up and down movement there is.

04 Women often take short steps and walk in a straight line, the legs are closer together and there is very little up and down movement.

05 Men usually walk with their legs further apart with lots of up and down head and body movement.

If we trace or rotoscope a walk from some live action footage it doesn’t work very well and appears to float. In animation we should caricature real life and increase or exaggerate the ups and downs. We just don’t get a feeling of weight from smooth, level movement.

06 Its the up and down positions that give a feeling of weight.

It’s important to understand how a normal walk works before we can start to build or  invent walks of our own.

06A First we’ll make two contact positions. In a normal, conventional walk the arms oppose the legs to give balance.

07 Next we’ll put in the passing position, the middle position, breakdown or half way phase.

08 Because the leg is straight up on the passing position it lifts the pelvis, body and head slightly higher.

Next the down position where the bent leg takes the weight.

09 The arm swing is at its widest on the down position.

10 Next we put in the up position or the push off. The foot pushing off lifts the pelvis body and head to its highest position. Then the leg is thrown out to catch us on the contact position, so we don’t fall flat on our face.

11 This is a walk spread out for clarity.

12 So in a normal walk the weight goes down just after the contact position and the weight goes up just after the passing position.

12A The first thing to do in a walk is to set a beat. Generally people will walk with two steps per second. That means from contact to contact there will be 12 frames.

This a little bit difficult to divide up though and some of the inbetweens will need to be on ‘thirds’.

It’s a lot easier to animate a walk on 16’s or 8’s (3 steps per second), it’s easier to decide where to put the inbetweens.

At first it’s better to animate a walk across the page as opposed to trying to animate a cycle.

Just to make sure you understand that timing is the most important part of the process let’s have a look at some different ones. Remember we are working with 25 frames per second.

WRITE ON BOARD 4 frames = A very fast run (6 steps per second)

6 Frames = a run or very fast walk (4 steps per second)

8 frames = slow run or cartoon walk (3 steps per second)

12 frames = brisk, Natural walk (2 steps per second)

24 frames = slow step, for an old person’s walk.  (1 step per second)

The Passing Position or Breakdown

13 One way to build a walk is to start with three drawings, first make the two contact positions

Then put in the middle position, passing position or breakdown. Raise it up higher than normal,

Try it again but put the passing position down below the contact positions, this will give us a very cartoony walk but will still give us a feeling of weight.

14 The crucial thing is where to put the passing position.

14A Try it with a squash or bent like a kidney shape.

Or bent backwards

We can delay the foot or do this in a slow step, it will look like a sneak.

The animation medium is very unusual in that we can accomplish actions that no human could and make it look convincing.

15 Deciding where to put the passing position is a key to animating a good walk, then we can decide what to do with the head, arms feet, the possibilities are endless. The main thing is to understand the mood of the character in question.

16 Once we’ve settled on a style of walk for the character we can start to think about counteraction and overlapping action. With a character who has a belly the stomach mass can go up as the body goes down.

It’s the same with drapery, when the character goes up the drapery goes down, this applies to things like hair, breasts and any other appendages.

16A One tricky thing to animate is a woman walking from a back view. The bum moves in the direction of the forward foot. Drapery would oppose the hips with a delay and then settle.

17 In the 50’s and 60’s studios like UPA put all these principles in place then played around with them.

17A Eventually, we find we’ve come full circle in the realisation that no two characters walk the same.

19 Loosening it up:

Starting with a simple walk, arms opposite legs, shoulder forward when arms go forward and back when shoulder goes back.

20 Front view, Tilt the shoulders, it’s taking the basic plan and building on it.

On the passing position the hips and shoulders are more or less straight.

21 To give more character to a walk, tilt the head once the hips and shoulders are down.