How to Keyframe in Walk Cycle Animation

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Cable for Expert Village. In this clip, we're going to start drawing our key frames for our walk cycle. So with our guide frame on the light box - and it's on - guide frame is down first. Just put down a new sheet and don't forget to label your frames. This will be key frame number one. And for your rough key frames, just draw exactly that. Very rough. Don't try to get it right the first time. Just draw very loosely. Start with a simple skeletal structure. Indicate where the joints are. It's good to start with the hips. So here's our character's hips. This is our contact position, so his legs are here, there's his knee. Start simply and contact...there's his ankle. Really really rough. Especially this helps really well when you're just getting started. And there's the other ankle. And there's our contact position number one. Now, next go through your other key frames, labeling your key frames one. And then your next key frame would be three and the next key frame five, seven, nine, eleven, thirteen and fifteen. We'll ad the in-betweens later. Key fifteen will almost be like key number one. This is so that it will loop seamlessly and the character can walk indefinitely in the middle of the frame. After the leg positions are drawn for each position in both strides, left and right, go back and add the upper body. Go back and add the upper body. Really, really simple shapes. Doesn't even have a neck here. In this case, just add the torso and the head. It can be really, really rough. Just like that. Now the lines can be very loose and sketchy at this point. We'll do a lot of cleanup over the next few clips."