Animation Walk Cycle

Pre Production/Planning

I began this assessment by deciding on a walk cycle that would challenge me and could be completed within the recommended time and frame number. The walk cycle i decided on was a sneak cycle.I started out by sketching my reference as well as researching videos and images to help with my process. Below is a reference sketch as well as a video that i continually looked at through my animation process.

Blocking/Animation

I then headed into Maya and got to work on my blocking for my walk cycle. This wasn’t to hard of a task to complete, due to the great reference i had at my disposal and a well rigged character. The hard task was creating my first passing animation, i had some trouble at first making my character move forward without sliding especially in the ankle and toes. A lot of time was spent in the graph editor pulling and pushing keys trying to make it perfect, and with time i got there in the end. I then focused my attention to the upper body , working with the shoulders, elbows , wrists and clavicles and making it match with the flow of the leg movements. This was a important step because we needed to cycle our animation to do a continues walk. So  the last key frames of the arms and legs needed to be the same  as my first. i did this by copying the stats of my first frames in the graph editor and pasting them in the last frame of the same control. This in the end made my animation go through a continues walk with no problems. All in all i feel this assessment was a good challenge for me. It gave me a a greater understanding of human body movement and flow to incorporate into my animation as well as future assignments.