Walk Cycles? NOT A PROBLEM!

In college, one of the first animation exercises we did was animating a walk cycle.

Not gonna lie folks, it was a bit overwhelming.

There are SO MANY ways of moving a character and principles to remember.

But then, we got a tip from classic animation that made the task go from impossible to actually totally doable! (•̀ᴗ•́ )ゞ

It came from the book “The Animation Survival Kit”, the absolute GOAT of animation books.

In it, there is a super easy-to-digest method for walk cycles built on one deceptively simple principle: you only need FOUR poses!

Yup, you read that right - to make a character walk, these are ALL you’ll ever need:

1️⃣ CONTACT: the exact moment mid motion where your character’s feet are the furthest apart, and both on the ground.

2️⃣ DOWN: this is when weight shifts to the front foot and the foot on the back starts lifting off.

3️⃣ PASSING: the transition pose where the back leg is raised and starts going forward, while the front leg stays in place.

4️⃣ UP: the moment when your character is at it’s highest point and the moving leg is about to fall back to the ground.

And that's it!

From there, the cycle repeats starting with CONTACT now with the opposite leg.

Then it’s just a matter of adding poses in-between the four main ones, polishing them, and mirroring the animation for the other leg.

This framework has helped me SO MUCH when animating, I hope it helps y’all too! ✨

You can watch my brand new full walk cycle tutorial here: https://youtu.be/_DLSWiZ6NHo