How to Create Walking Animation

Video Transcript

"Creating a walk in animation is one of the most basic exercises. It's also one of the most difficult to get. There...once you master a walk, you can do probably just about anything. When someone walks, it's almost a series of falls. You lean forward a little bit and each step kind of catches yourself from falling over. So if you have a character who's walking, one of the first poses he's going to hit is the...well, one of the first poses you want to draw is the stride. That's when the legs are at their farthest apart. Okay? Now, let's draw...this is going to be the surface he's walking on, and I'm going to draw very, very rough. The next drawing that you want is called the recoil. Start with the head again. The body's going to come down just a little bit, and his right leg is going to be bent. It's where all the weight comes down on his...on the right leg like that. The left leg is going to be coming over here and passing in front of his right. And remember, your arms work in opposition to your legs, so when your right leg is forward, your left arm is forward. So this arm is going to be coming back right here. I'm just going to draw a little ball for the fist. And his other arm is coming forward. And I can go back and forth between those two drawings and you can see he's starting to step. And then there's the push-off, and this...his right foot is starting to push off a little bit, and his left leg is swinging forward. And his arm is coming back there, and his other arm is swinging forward in that. And again, I can...you can see him step forward like that. And that's just half the steps. Now, when you want to do the next part of it, you're basically going to be tracing the...your first drawings, only reversing all the arms...all the..all your limbs. So if you stack the first drawing and the...and the...and the next one...and the first drawing and the...and this one, they should be almost the same silhouette. But just the arms and legs are reversed. Let's see. See, he's starting to walk there. And again, we have the recoil here where this... And this is the push-off of his left leg as his right leg's coming forward, and his arm's here. His head's up on top. And now this is a very quick version of...rough version of a walk."