AF Winter Challenge - Walk Cycle

Well, got a new challenge from the Animation Forum the other day. This one is a bit more involoved than the weekly character design contests are, as we have to complete a well planned walk cycle. I'm really excited about this one as I know it will force me to push myself & I'm bound to learn something new :)
Here is the Challenge & it's description in full.


My first step of course was to do some homework. I found a number of great resources for planning out & executing walk cycles, and I suggest you give them a look. Some stuff gets repeated, but it's well worth reading. There's a ton more out there just a google search away, but these are a good base.

Idleworm Walk Cycle Tutorial

Walk Tutorial by Mike Brown

Preston Blair's page of walks (reference)

Now that I've done some research, I can start thinking about what kind of walk I want to attempt. I ended up deciding on a combination of sorts, where my character is going to walk very slowly on screen in a downtrodden/forlorn sort of way, then find something on the ground that perks his spirits up & makes him skip/prance off into the distance.

Sounds good right? So how do we do this? How do we plan it out? Well I'm loosley basing my char's walk on Preston Blair's "slouch" walk. Although I think (hope) that I've put my own touch of originality on it. But that gives me a general idea of how I want my contact poses to look. "Contact" poses are when the feet are farthest apart from each other & both touching the ground. The contact poses are the most extreme positions in any walk. Now, I don't usually give hard & fast rules, at least I try not to, but CONTACT POSES ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT POSITION IN ANY WALK CYCLE!!! IF YOU DO NOT START WITH THE CONTACTS THEN THE SKY WILL FALL AND THE THIRD WORLD WILL BE SENT BACK TO THE FOURTH!!!

Well, your walk will likely suck anyway.... Seriously, the contact poses determine the length of your character's stride. This is hugely important to the rest of your walk, and if you screw up the contacts, it will be like building a house on sand. Spend some time on these poses & it will save you LOTS of time later on. Once you have your two contact poses, the rest just needs to be filled in & the only limits are your imagination & creativity.

Here are my 3 contact poses. They are frames 1, 8 & 15, with 1 & 15 being the same drawing. This establishes a full looping walk, & even just playing these two frames will give the semblance of a walk.

As you can see I add little notes underneath my roughs so I know what needs rivising on each frame when I eventually get to cleaning up.

Now I can put some more thought into the personality of this walk. I've already got a pose that suggests he's a little bummed out, & to stress that even further in the walk I want him to do a couple things:
1) Drag his feet like they weigh 50 pounds each.
2) Have lots of weight & take a lot of effort to lift it. I'll do this by manipulating his up & down motion through the walk, making him take a long time to get up to his high point, but coming down into his recoil position very quickly.

To plan this out, I drew up a couple of charts (I don't know the proper name for these if there is one) to help me place my frames & get a feel for the timing of the walk. The first chart shows the frames spaced in relation to each other & marked at different heights to indicate keyframes, inbetweens, and breakdowns. (with a couple mistakes on my part, but that's what it's supposed to show :)


This next one again has the frames spaced out, but this time along a motion path that I drew for the top of his head. Now the timing of the walk becomes much clearer, as you can see that he will go from the high point(frames 7 & 14) to the recoil (low point, frames 2 & 9) in only 2 frames respectively. However, to get from the recoil to the high point of the walk it will take 5 frames. This should give me the slow up/fast down motion that I said I wanted.
C = contact pose
R = recoil pose (downstep)
P = Passing pose
HP = high point
IB = inbetween *note* more of these will probably be added


Just to sum up in case it is unclear, I begin the first chart with frames 1 & 15, and frame 8 spaced directly in the middle of them. These are the three contact poses from the first image above. Right between the contact poses I put the passing poses, frames 4 & 11, so his legs will pass each other right at the mid-point of his step. I then split the distance between the contact & passing poses and added the recoil frames, 2 & 9. Then I did the same for the high points, frames 7 & 14, putting them directly between the passing & following contact poses. Now I have all my key frames spaced out, *note* on the chart I should have made the marks for frames 2 & 9 the same height as 1, 4, 7, 8, 11, 14, 15. The tallest marks represent keyframes. I then put a few inbetweens (the smaller marks) between some of the keys, to make for the timing I want. Notice all the inbetweens happen between the recoil & high point. This is how I will get the slow-up/fast-down motion I've been mentioning.

And here is what I have so far roughed out. Still have a bunch of inbetweens & breakdowns left, which are the blank white frames right now. I also noticed that in a couple frames I have the shoulders going the opposite way that they should to counter the hips. That's why it looks jumpy in a few spots. I'm probably just going to finish the inbetweens first then tweak the shoulders where necessary. Overall though I'm extremely happy with how this is shaping up so far. If you have any crits or comments please feel free to give them, I'm always open to suggestions. Also I'll post updates here of course, but if you're interested you can keep up with my progress in this thread.

Hope some people found this helpful, it's by no means a bible to go by, just a record of my workflow you can compare with your own in the off chance it's useful.