How to Animate a Basic Walk Cycle 🚶

morning everyone so today we're going to animate a basic walk cycle nothing too crazy just uh kind of vanilla step by step process of animating watercycle i'm going to be doing this in adobe animate but you can do this in any software that allows keyframes and allows you to extend frames and allows opacity and moving of frames so i'm gonna set my frame rate to 24 frames a second and my canvas size is just 1920 by 1080 standard stuff i'm going to click create so my processors for this will be for adobe animate but you can adapt this to whichever animation software you're using i'm going to change my view here to fit in window so i find that's a little bit easier if i happen to resize certain things then that keeps the uh canvas all in view uh looks like a brush size to something maybe four five six nothing too thick but i'm gonna check my pen pressure so it can get thicker or thinner depending on how hard or light i press but that doesn't matter uh if you don't have that that's just something i prefer the first thing i'm gonna do is on this blank new layer i'm just going to rename this ground and i'm going to hold shift and just draw a straight line and this would be my reference point for where my character is going to walk i'm going to right click this and go properties and just change the opacity down to something a little bit more less obtuse so i'm going to change the transparency on here to 75. uh if yours says opacity then you'll turn the opacity down to 25. uh but i find this is enough that i can see but it's not too intrusive i'm going to lock that as well so i changed the transparency down quite a way and i'm going to make a new layer and this is going to be my rough pass layer so the first pose i'm going to draw is what's called the contact pose i'm just using some basic shapes here so circles for heads things like this squares are bodies so it's going to be a very rough animation [Music] so head is gonna be flowing the body so this contact pose is where we're gonna start and the leg the leading leg which is the one closest to us which i'm gonna call the front leg is in the forwards position and the heel is touching the ground so i'm going to draw a basic little triangle for a foot here the front arm the arm that's closest to us i'm going to draw just a little basic sausage is going to be in this back position looking towards the circle for hand nothing too crazy and now press e for a razor just to raise up the body part there because the body is now behind this arm and the rear leg is going to be slightly bent with the heel off the ground and the toes are still touching and the knee is going to be bent and this is going to be behind the other leg i'm just going to just gently shade this in so i can identify which leg is which and this rear arm is in this forwards position and i'm just going to gently shade that in as well so this is the contact pose and ideally what we're going to have is eight drawings so we have eight keyframes this is the first keyframe which i'm gonna make last for three frames so however you extend your frame exposure in your animation software um will be different so for this i've got my shortcut for insert frame set to f5 so i'm going to tap f5 a couple of times so this drawing now lasts for three frames and i'm gonna make my next keyframe uh which is going to be a blank keyframe and i'm going to turn my onion skin on so i can see my drawing if your uh ground layer isn't showing uh if you're in adobe animate you can press insert frame on that layer to bring that back um to where you can see it and you might need to extend that frame if you're in other animation software so this next pose is called the down pose so our weight is being put onto this leading foot so the knee is going to be slightly bent [Music] and the heel is going to come back this way so our character is walking on the spot [Music] and our waist is going to be slightly further down [Music] this front arm is in the process of swinging forward so the hand is going to be about here so the shoulder is going to be a little bit further down as well because the waist has moved down [Music] and that means the head is slightly further down as well and this rear arm here is in the process of swinging backwards so that's going to be about here i'm just going to shade that in and this leg is in the process of moving forwards like this so it's going to be slightly off the ground so it's just the tip toes touching the ground now and the knee is slightly further forward and slightly lower this is our down pose it's got contact down [Music] so i'm going to make this last for three frames as well and i'm gonna do my third key frame my third key drawing this is gonna be called what's called the passing pose so this is where your leading leg the front leg is straightening up and the heel is going to be further back to here so the waist is going to be further up and this is going to be much straighter as we allow the body to be able to bring this rear leg forward so the shoulders are a bit higher up here the head is going to be higher up higher than the contact pose so if you want you can make an additional layer and on this additional layer you can just hold shift and draw a straight line to make a note of where each of these poses are and you can change the opacity of that layer as well i'm going to rename that notes so i'm going to make that 75 transparent now i'm just going to lock that so on my passing pose i would like the head to be slightly higher so again this is just quite rough so i'm just going to in crease the height my shoulders there [Music] the arm which is here is swinging forward still so this is going to be by the side the body so this is the hand is going to be here shoulder up there and this rear arm is in the process of being backwards but this is obscured by the body so we won't be able to see that so i might just straighten up this leg a tiny bit actually i'm just quickly redrawing and moving these bits around and this rear leg is in the process of swinging forward so the knee is going to be poking slightly forward here and the foot is going to be completely off the ground and being dragged forward and i'm just going to unlock my notes later and then just draw another line to making a note of where that passing level is for my head i'm going to increase this for two more frames so the last of three frames so we've now got our contact down and passing [Music] and then i'm going to make my fourth keyframe so my fourth key drawing and i'm just going to press insert frame to extend those layers underneath and turn my onion skin back on and this is what's going to be called the up pose so this is where our leading leg is now starting to push off the ground and ready for our rear leg to take the weight of the next step so this is where our head will be highest we can draw our shoulders a bit higher the waist a tiny bit higher and the leg will be pointing back this way slightly and the foot the heel will be off the ground here and the toes will still be touching the ground and our knee will be further up and our leg will be further forward the lower part of our leg and the foot kind of facing forward ready to take the weight of the next step so i'm going to shade that in so i know which is which uh this arm is still swinging forward here so i'm going to draw the hand around here and the shoulders a bit further up there raise out these other bits so the rear arm which is hidden by the body is now swinging back this way so this is just starting to make its appearance on the other side there and i'm going to extend this for two more frames so we've now got contact down passing and up [Music] so the next half of this cycle because we've only got half of this at the moment so we've got we'll see we have our our front leg which is here i'm just going to scribble in so you can see which leg is which so our front blue leg is moving back this way so our next pose needs to be with this front leg in the back position which happens to be the same position as this so what i'm going to do i'm going to make a new layer and i'm just going to call this temporary because we're only going to temporarily use this and i'm going to click and drag across the first four drawings i've made and i'm going to press alt on pc and option on mac as i click and drag these and that creates a copy and i'm going to right click this temporary layer and go to properties and i'm going to change transparency to 75 and i'm just going to lock that layer so now i've got space for four more drawings which will complete this cycle so i'm gonna basically trace this original drawing but swap the limbs over so if we compare our previous drawing our front leg is here so it now needs to be in this rear position which is what we've already drawn so i'm just going to trace this and use these poses let's swap the legs over so this is now going to be the front leg and this here is going to be the front arm hopefully this makes sense and you can kind of see what's going on so now what was the pose for the front arm in the first drawing is now the pose for the rear arm and this pose the front leg originally is now the pose for the rear leg and i can keep the head in the same position so now if i quickly just kind of color in this front leg you can see you can actually see the leg [Music] moving through these new drawings now so i'm just going to increase the exposure for three frames and it's going to do the same thing and trace the original drawings that put the limbs in the opposite position [Music] so the reason i trace my first four drawings is to keep a nice consistent appearance to the animation [Music] so because this arm here both arms will be in the same position anyway we don't need to worry about changing that too much because the arm on the other side will be in the same position anyway sometimes animation is about being efficient not necessarily cutting corners but finding quicker easier ways to do things that saves you time so this is one way i do that with a walk cycle it gives it a linear kind of appearance um when you play it back uh but this is a good starting point if you're a beginner okay so now trace these last four drawings but change the position around all the limbs and i've kept this front leg called in blue so we can track it so if i just hide my temporary layer and if i play this by pressing enter and i'm just going to increase the exposure for the increase exposure for the ground layer and just hide my notes layer as well i'm going to go ctrl and go loop playback so if i play this now we can see the blue leg starts at the front and goes to the back and it links back up with the starting position that we drew out so this is a very basic walk cycle it's got four main drawings that are switched for the second full drawing so eight drawings all together and these are your keyframes and that's it this is a very basic walk cycle and you can do this in any animation software if you want to make your animation look a little smoother then you can add in betweens but i tend to recommend doing this once you've neatened up the line work you have here which is often called a tie down phase or a rough pass too so what you could do is make a second rough pass layer so rough past two i'm gonna hide my other layers change the opacity of rough pass one so i'm gonna change that to 75 i'm just gonna lock that so i don't actually end up drawing on it i'm going to put a blank keyframe where there are keyframes underneath so just matching those up i'm just going to zoom in slightly as well and i am going to just do neater line work on a new layer [Music] [Music] so if i hide my rough past one i now have a neatened line work so this could be a rough pass too like a second rough pass or maybe this could be called a tie down this is where you tie down your line work after you've got the motion from the rough paths so something you can do if you want to this is a little bit of extra work but you can add what's called in betweens so each of these keyframes lasts for three frames and we can do is we can turn these into blank keyframes and turn your onion skin on and you can draw in between the drawings you've already made so in my case blue is the previous frame so this is the onion skin range here and red is the next frame so you can change the onion skin range to show more frames so because we've got two frames in between i've stretched my onion skin range two frames ahead so i can see the next keyframe and it's just a matter of drawing in between these two drawings [Music] for each part of the body so just making careful note of where all your lines are and drawing in between those because we've got two frames we need to make sure we draw the right spacing for these frames this is quite a tricky process and it comes with practice but it's uh this is slightly more advanced animators if you want to give yourself a challenge but honestly keyframes looks quite nice [Music] and it's just a matter of doing this for the rest of the keyframes so in between smooth out your action so it looks a bit more like this and if you do it for the rest of the animation it will go from looking like this [Music] something to something a bit like this hopefully a little bit neater and a little bit more care so something i did to make sure i get in between the last keyframe to something else is to click the first frame and alt or option drag that first frame to the end so i can have the onion skin to see what's coming ahead so it loops nicely so you might want to do this different way in animation software so copying her the first frame back to the air at the end of the timeline so you can see what's what and this is an in between very basic walk cycle and there you have it so just a basic tutorial which i will probably come back to with an advanced tutorial at a later time so four key drawings to start and then copying those to make a different set after so eight drawings all together with the same poses just with different limbs and different places and there we have it send me a tweet with your version and let me know how you go on [Music] thanks for my patrons supporting this episode and i'll see you next time thanks a lot see you later

Channel: Dan Root - Animation Tips

Views: 97,248

Keywords: AnimTute, animation tutorial, dan root, animation tips, animation tricks

Id: GKe4jc25Dj8

Length: 18min 19sec (1099 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 27 2022