We got an actual Brief for these two walk cycles. Basically we had footage recorded of us pacing up and down doing ‘a walk’. I did ‘my walk’. It is a pretty casual walk, yet quite quick partly because I have a fairly long stride.

Since this was to be a walk cycle, I had to analyze my reference footage carefully to pick out the essential aspects and subtleties (that word doesn’t look like it is spelt right? It is though, I googled it) of my walking style, then possibly exaggerate them. I decided to break the video down to some key movements and overlapped them to get an idea of how my body ‘flows’, as you can see in the image above.

Something I noticed about my walk is that I literally dump my raised armed down at the passing stage. You can get a feel of the drop impact from how my wrist movement flies back. Also, my feet never come far off the ground. I almost drag the toes along the floor. It is a pretty lazy walk, with the drive really behind the legs and all other limbs are just pulled along.

The chap I used for animating is called Boy, he is not a physical likeness of myself by any means, but I think he ended up moving a lot like me. He had a pretty gay purple shirt on when I got him, but I changed that in favour of something that suited me a little more.

I’m fairly happy with the walk, I’m not too sure what else I would of done to it, without getting some feedback first. The head movement is a tad jerky again, but not as bad as my previous cycle. The leg movement is pretty smooth, though I’m fairly confident with the legs and feet. The upper body is what I feel I need to concentrate on most. It is quite amazing how much a bit of practice can help you improve.

The traditional 2D walk cycle was numbing as ever and took probably 4 or 5 times as long as my 3D walk cycle to complete. Which would be fine if it was 4 or 5 times as good, or even just comparably good, but it is not.

Something I should of kept an eye on is the size of his head, it looks like a tumor  or an alien is rocking back and forth inside of it . Also the leg furthest away is a lot stiffer and possibly shorter at times. In fact the whole body is very stiff, which my walk is definitely not. My walk has casual swing and ultimate style. This guy looks like he is about to collapse and die. Ultimately I’m not convinced it looks much like my walk, or in fact, have any of the aspects I wanted to exaggerate. Sure it is someone walking, but it isn’t me.

Or is it? I’ve been staring at it for days, so I’m not viewing it with fresh eyes. You know why the comment box is down below people. Give me feedback.

Edit – something which Andy pointed out is his forward leaning movement is too exaggerated, which is oh so true.

Roy