How to Make Walking Animations

Animating walking is a good first step in learning how to create your own animated movies.

Making a walking animation is a good way to learn the basics of this art. It requires moving the arms, legs and body of your animated character in a believable and realistic fashion. Making an animation also requires downloading an animation program, such as Flash, Anime Studio or C++. Download and learn the basics on how to use one of these programs before beginning your walking animation. They all operate using a similar process, such as drawing individual sections of the body, combining the sections and creating slightly different variations on the character to create the illusion of movement.

Instructions

1. Draw your character on a piece of paper using simple shapes, such as ovals, squares and triangles. The head should be a small circle, the body an oval and the arms and legs a combination of squares, ovals and triangles. The character should be viewed from the side.

2. Storyboard your animation by drawing the same character multiple times. Change his stance with each new drawing such as moving his arms and legs forward. This should be done slightly, using a combination of at least ten different drawings or "frames." Make sure the final step in the walking cycle leads back to the original stance to create an animation "loop."

3. Open your animation studio and begin creating your first drawing. Each program will use a slight variation of the same process. For example, in Flash Animation, you create "layers," which means the different shapes of the animation using a drawing program similar to Microsoft Paintbrush. You can use circle tools, line tools and square tools to finish your first drawing.

4. Click on "next frame" to begin your next frame in the animation. Copy and paste your original drawing into the frame to save yourself time. However, delete the arms and legs and redraw them to look like the second animation of your drawing. This slight change in posture will create the illusion of movement when viewed rapidly.

5. Watch your animation to decide on how smooth it is progressing. If it looks like the limbs are moving too fast or "jerking" you may want to modify your second drawing to make the body movements more subtle. Use all your drawing tools in your program to perform this task. Save your work regularly to avoid losing work.

6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you have finished each drawing of your animation. Double check to make sure your character's walking animation loops to the original animation properly. Make any adjustments you want and save your work.

References

• We Papers: Walking Animation in Flash
• Idle Worm: Walking Animation
• Cartoon Learning: Anime Studio Tutorial Walk Cycle Animation