Walks with Personality: Week 5

To create a walk cycle with personality you have to change the positions/ posture and rhythm of the walk. The image bellow form Richard Williams ' the Animator's Survival Kit' shows changing the posture of the character in the passing position can change the nature of the walk. The walk on the left looks like a very depressed character where are the one on the right is leaning back exposing his chest and gives off a more enthusiastic walk.

Analysing Walk Cycles:

The video bellow is from a web site called Walk Cycle Depot which has a number of different walk cycles. I decide to analyse this particular walk cycle as it had a lot of weight and it's rhythm wasn't even as the other walk cycle I have done so far have been.


                   
                  http://walk-cycle-depot.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/ball-chain-walk-cycle.html

Defining a Walk Cycle:

When creating a charcter thtough a walk there are 6 main aspects to remember which I will use the walk cycle above as an example.

Stride: The stride length is different both in timing and in distance. The right leg starts far behind the main body and though it never goes past the shoulder it has a longer stride then the left leg. The left leg, although it could travel further, stay close to the main body to provide an anchor in the passing position Where the character is literally throwing his weight forward.  The timing of the strides are also different. The right leg has to drag the weight of the ball and chain so takes longer to move. The left leg however needs to catch the character (4th image- the character is out of balance) and therefore needs to move faster then the right.

Height: The height of the legs are not very high and the walk is more like a shuffle then a march. In most of the positions both feet are planted on the ground and the legs are mostly bent, with the exception of right leg in the 2nd image.

Arcs: This mainly concerns the shoulders and the drops in the walk. In this walk the shoulders start at a low positions and get pulled up and forward before dropping again. It is this repeated pattern that creates an arch in the walks movement. this walk leads through the shoulders, but mostly through the right shoulder. This can be seen as the character moves it forward and then up before he lifts his feet off the ground.

Posture: The posture of the character can also tell us it's personality particularly in the 5th image. This this contact position the back is almost doubled over with very hunched shoulders. The neck is pointing down with the head nestled between the shoulder facing down. The arms are a very good indicator of the characters mood; they hang limp at his side and only move as a subject of overlap or being lead by the shoulders. Over all the posture tells us this character is tired, very low in mood and exhausted.

Twist: The greatest amount of twist happens in the torso but in this walk there is a great deal of twist in the right hip. The right hip has to shift the weight of not only the body forward but also the ball and chain. It starts rotated out showing the pelvis to camera. It then rotates up and then forward and it brings the right leg up and forward into the passing position. It then drops down and comes up again as the left leg moves forward.  This heaving motion, which is also created by the right shoulder gives he walk a great feeling of the height being shifted forwards.

Overlap: Overlap happens mostly in the hands and fingers or in any lose item of clothing, accessory or hair the character might have. For this character the only great amount of overlap is in the hand. In the 3rd image the right hand in pointing back to the body but in the next image as the shoulders are dropping the hand is lifted slightly and points away from the body.

Reference Vidoes:

After having analysed the walk cycle above I decided to create my own reference videos and analyse the different aspects of the cycles.

A Normal Walk:

Skipping:

Hunched Over:

Tiptoeing:

Walking with a Limp/Heavy leg:

Very Floppy/ Relaxed Walk:

Ball and Leg walks cycles using Reference Videos:

Skipping:

This walk cycle was the most difficult one out of the three because the knees kept wobbling. In-between the key frames the knees kept moving about and it was really difficult to find a way to stop them, through changing the key frame values or through the graph editor. This cycle was particularly interesting to do because at the passing position the feet are both of the ground. I also decided to extend the number of frames for the cycle to 27 frames so the ball could have more lengthy bounds.

TipToe Walk:

What defines this walk in the up and down motion as it creeps forward. Only once had I created enough contrast between the two extremes only then did the walk look effective. Unlike any of my previous walk the legs were never fully extended which made the walk fun to do as it allowed sense of compression and realise which gave a feeling of a bounce. With this cycle I decided to experiment with the squash and stench deformed on the ball as I noticed when analysing this walk that as I moved up and down I was squashing and extending my body. Again with this cycle I extended the number of frames to 38 to make the walk look slow, measured and purposeful.

Walking with a Limp:

This was very much inspired by the walk cycle form the Walk Cycle Depot (above). Here I exaggerated the rotation on the right hip in order to lift the right leg off the ground.  Here I also experimented with different timings. The right leg takes 25fr to take one step where are the left leg takes 11fr. I decided to do this to exaggerate the limp and give the feeling that the right leg can't take any weight so the left leg has to move quickly to take the weight again.





These studies have been really helpful in improving my analytical skills when looking at a characters walk and will be of great use when designing my own character;s walk.