Animating A Walk Cycle

Beginning of an Animation

 

The initial animation of the walk cycle proved to be very challenging. In retrospect, perhaps I should have chosen a human character for my initial attempts at walking animation. Less moving parts after all. That being said, while I know it is far from perfect, the pup does look like she is walking.

I started with a basic drawing of the puppy and through, cutting, copying, manipulating, and duplicating each aspect of the puppy (Body and Legs) I was able to create 10 distinct symbols for the front and rear legs independent of the body. I then duplicated these, and slightly altered the color to make an inside and outside set of leg symbols. Forty symbols in all…WHEW!

I then assembled the puppy into multiple symbols and combined them into a separate single motion symbol, keeping the individually assembled symbols as secondary separate symbols.

Three ways to animate a walk cycle:

Sequence 1:

Using the single motion symbol I inserted her into her spaceship background as a separate layer, and set the background as a looped scrolling motion tween. I added the shadow as a third layer just to give it the sense she is walking on a surface and not floating in mid air.

Sequence 2:

Setting the background as a stationary symbol I inserted the individual walk cycle symbols across the scene using symbol swap at each stage of the walk as a frame by frame assembly. I then inserted the shadow as a frame by frame movement.

Sequence 3:

I inserted the stationary background and set the motion symbol as a motion tween. The shadow was inserted as a motion tween to match speed and location.