Week 7 – Walk Cycles
The 7th week of this course focused primarily on walk cycles, specifically human walk cycles. Steve went through various approaches to a cycle and the emotions that can be conveyed, including angry walk cycles or walk cycles in heels.
Before all of this however, I decided to try and make another original character design, using the questions once again as a basis and using guidelines to help draw a turnaround. I created a character called Alder, a man who’s lost limbs and has clearly been through a rough patch with his torn-up costume. I specifically emphasised highlights here to add a suggestion that he might be a traveller in the rain (although the mechanical hand feels a little too clumpy at the moment).
My first attempt of a walk cycle on this course involved Boruto (as seen above and below). I’ve been talking a bit about Ichiro Uno as my inspiration to my own art style, so it seemed appropriate to use his own character design for Boruto’s landmark 189 episode. The first attempt above felt a tiny bit off – a little too much swagger and a slight timing issue when the right leg steps forward. I’d held the right leg for a little too long which gives an unnecessary pause, as well as the arms swinging a little too far forward. I made some minor adjustments when I added a background to make the timing feel more natural below.
This wasn’t a part of the scheduled lessons, but I also took the character I designed last week, and animated a front-facing walk cycle to see what he’d be like to animate. I wasn’t planning on adding any shading, but I ultimately did to help define which leg was forwards and which was back. I remember when I designed Don that i wanted it to feel a little loose and baggy, and I think it came through in the end. You can see both the character-only walk cycle as well as the added background below.
This also was the last week of Maya for me, as the Photoshop lessons in the 2D pathway were wrapping up. Kevin largely let us get on with it on our own, offering feedback here and there, but he set a brief of animating walk cycles of different moods. We could choose either happy, sad or angry. Admittedly, I’d already decided beforehand that I was going to animate a moonwalk, because it seemed like a fun prospect. The result is below, and I’ve got to say, it turned out far nicer than I’d imagined.
The last exercise involved a mood-change walk cycle. Basically, start off with one emotion, add a reaction in the middle before ending off with another emotion. Kevin suggested I add a shrug in the middle to add a little more personality and ease the audience into the second emotion, which you can see below. There is one criticism which I did get which was that the character’s feet slide during the walk, but I ultimately left it alone since I won’t be tackling 3D again next week. Though I’ll be honest, 3D was surprisingly more fun that I gave it credit for in the earlier weeks. It’s appealing to be able to animate something and not worry about volume or consistency, even if it does getting confusing when each limb has its own timeline and controls.
After last week’s tutorial with Ko, we returned to Maryclare’s life-drawing classes with a model called Esther. This week’s class specifically focused on drawing extreme perspectives and everyday action sequences, such as sitting on a chair or turning around, as well as emotions and expressions. I found it particularly helpful with the perspectives, as it forced me to try and think about where different parts of the body are in relation to each other when looking from above or from the side. It wasn’t executed the best it could have been, but I still enjoyed trying all these angles out. Even the short exercises helped, forcing me to move on from one drawing to the next without time for refinement or perfection.
Lastly, I had a look into what comes next, and the timetable mentions another mood-changing walk cycle in 2D. So I started a rough version which I’ll bring to Steve on Monday and get his feedback on.