After Effects - Walk cycle tutorial

[Music] hey guys welcome to my very first ever video tutorial on animation my name is Tony and today we're going to make a cute walk cycle using this character in After Effects using only shape layers without any plugins whatsoever so let's begin will import the illustration from illustrator import as composition retailer sizes go inside I messed up and the illustration is too small so if you try to scale everything out like this everything scales up from the anchor point and ducky gets super fat well that's kind of cool but we'll have to add and you know current everything to the no and scale no like so well that's good enough goal eternal and create shapes from vector okay let's delete the inspiration file and I'll Center ducky okay and now I'm going to parent I am the beak to the head the head to the body and the wing to the body now we'll take care of the registration points the wings should okay and head the registration point should be around here you've got no neck so where I belong it let's start a frame 40 frame 56 this animation is 16 frames long and the first thing we'll do is animate the body it P make a keyframe and thank you from again and in the middle point we'll take a body slap let's take the legs off from now take the body down easy easy that's looking good let's add an expression to make it look forever look out cycle let's give it all right okay that looks good now let's add some motion to the I in the big hit position and wait I want to bake the big to be close and this one so I'll delete this path straighten me big yeah that looks good again it piqued and starting point pick and ice around here I should go around here copied frames add easy ease let's copy this the expression and paste it here and here it will look better trust me let's move on let's head to the wing and well Oh first let's add some really movement no fake free movement to the body will animate the yellow-belly so it will look like the bodies turning and let's take it in words then outwards Easy's that's looking pretty good now we'll animate the tail and as the body is rotating take it in words then outward easiiy that's nice now also at these points just much to tell be so it will look like the tail changing perspective to sell the animation nice now let's take care of the arm or wing let's add rotation to the thing like so easy ease let's add an expression called look in cycle cycle yeah and the belly got distorted so wait a minute okay now we'll change position on the arm - okay to be around here and around here as well that's pretty robotic so we'll have to offset the rotation to France forward that's pretty good and if you're making a human character that's basically it for the arm but we need some flapping motion and we need to animate the path looking good not will reverse if I can fit down get down as well over here yes that's nice but I don't really like timing so we'll add this position over here and this position here yeah that's better [Applause] copy the frames and offset it by one frame so it will look even better that's great now we need to rename it to broad way let's color code it red but it's color for the body as well - hmm see some nice well yellow and we'll duplicate wing call it back wing take the whole thing down and we'll need to we need to flip it so we'll hit scale and add negative hundred to the scale then we'll flip the rotation values as well - - 27 and here we go now the only thing that's left is position let's look nice one ticket is further life and let's check it out we've got some nice slap emotion on the arm very nice now we're going to do some magic on the head with rotation joke down then up again this looks like crap but if we had a loop out title to the mix and offset these frames to about here we're getting some very nice head bobbing like the upward very nice now the hard part the legs turn on the legs and we'll only need one leg at this time so I want to lift these and only need a foot and let's make it a bit longer that's nice let's call it right leg take it down a notch and let's set the anchor point let's enter it and take it over here yeah that's good let's make a guide for the floor over here each position separate dimensions we must separate the dimensions for the leg motion to get some nice curves stopwatch and keyframe over here and over here and let's take some guide so I'll know where to put the legs we'll start by positioning the leg over here on the x-axis and it should go to about here under the big it's fine and right here in the middle the legs will move up and everything should go back to its original position now as you see there's no curve it's all linear so we'll have to add easy ease over here and we're already getting some nice curves but I want to add some easing sorry easy ease out and is ii-in and we're getting some really nice curves and it's route looking nice but we have to add vacations to the thing so now on this frame the leg or the foot leave the floor so we need to adjust it this frame over here we'll take it like so and over here I'll make it like so I line it with it with a path so just before it hits the ground the leg should be in this position and one frame after that it hits the ground I set the keyframe over here let's check it out really nice now whatever will add some path animation to the whole thing and when the legs leave the ground I want to add point over here and get a contact frame or the heel leaves the ground then it goes back to normal then over here I want to leg end a bit like so and go back to normal so the leg leaves the floor fans and put it to growl that looks great let's check it out very nice now we'll need to add expressions so take the look out cycle edit to the rotation headed to Y position an exposition and path we'll need to duplicate it nice now duplicate the legs call it left leg let's color code the legs to something line not seafoam yeah folks guys nice and you need to time the left leg so we'll take it over here and this right here is the right timing for the legs as you'll see it looks pretty nice now is there no in part because we need to make the leg itself and for anyone who knows rubber hose you can just parent the hose to the body in the leg and that's basically it you got a perfect animation of the legs moving with the foot but we have to do it with shape layers so we'll make a shape layer take the pan tool from this off create half down a bit that's pretty good we'll call it the left leg left leg over here now to the right right leg turn it down and [Music] these are feet though I messed up right foot left foot and we'll add keyframe on the path let's line it I'll get a guide over here you don't want to move this point sideways only up and down with the body or else it will it will look really awesome so this part is frame by frame so bear with me here we go let's make curve on the leg okay down over here and check it down here as well okay over here Oh and stretched so and it's right not from this kind first frame so that's looking pretty close that check it out I'm getting some wobbling around here so wait that's decent let's copy these frames and paste them again let's call it left leg and will offset the whole thing to my chart with the other leg let's check it out nice so I want ahead I want to add some downward motion to the body as well a bit more that's too much yep that's good enough for now let's make a shadow new schaeffler get rid of the guide color a Jewish let's add a solid background call it a gs1 shadow we'll put a round cap on and animate the path this is pretty good take it down a notch in the middle a frame that keyframe that little plugs to go inward and that's easy ease the whole thing and here we go just to make sure that seems funny now we can pre compose the whole thing he lit up stays vector and the key is done looking pretty good alright thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed this tutorial sorry for mumbling all the way through I'd love to hear your comments in the comment section even if you want to share some animation you made based on this tutorial feel free to ask me anything you want bye for now and have a good one yeah

Channel: Tony Babel

Views: 434,542

Keywords: animation, walk cycle, after effects, animation tutorial, run cycle, 2d animation, adobe, illustrator, tony babel, character animation, after effects animation

Id: PgBo-00_GWc

Length: 26min 23sec (1583 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 30 2017