What is an Walk Cycle Animation?

Series Summary

A walk cycle is a sequence of frames representing a walk movement (usually human). Walk cycles are important because when a walking person appears in an animation, the walk cycle simply can be looped over and over, without having to animate each step again. For a human walk cycle, poses like passing point, high point, contact point and recoil point are identified as important frames that define the walk. Besides the apparent movement of the legs, other details are necessary for a convincing walk cycle, like arms, head and movement of the whole body.

In this free video series on walk cycle animation, our expert will show you how to design characters for walk cycles, how to film reference footage, and how to keyframe in walk cycle animation. This step by step process will breakdown the process into an easy-to-follow demonstration. Step up your animating skills with this free video!

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Cable on behalf of Expert Village. This series we're going to cover some basics on how to create character walk cycle with hand drawing animations. The purpose of a walk cycle is to not only show the character of your figure that you're moving but it's also used for efficiency. The few frames that you draw can be anywhere from fifteen to forty you would use over and over again in this cycle or walk loop. The character will stay in the middle of the frame meanwhile the background will move behind it, it's kind of like Scooby Doo when the mystery machine stayed in the middle of the screen and the back ground moved behind it. The first walk cycle can be tricky and it can take a lot of time so don't be surprised if it takes you anywhere from six to ten hours to complete this."