Walk cycle is too one of the most important things for an animator to know, how does a character walk – always based on a reference and it also talks about the character. Everyone walks differently, so it is algo a personallity trait.
Reference, Previs and Bloking
It all starts with a reference, every animator needs it and it makes our lives easier. Previs, a preview of the path the character is walking and bloking in which the main poses of the walk are set, it usually takes. It usually takes 12 frames for a step and 24 for the character to return to its inicial pose.
When I learned to actually do a walk cycle (in a tutorial) it taught me to loop it, but that is just wrong for an animator, we need to animate everything like it was a unique movement, it makes the animation more genuine and realistic.
Spline and Polish
After the bloking is complete, the next step is splining, which means that we have to work on the speed in which everything in the animation is happening, everything is too robotic and linear after bloking. Graph editor holds the curves and it’s time to work on them and the in between poses of the main ones.
Finally, the next step is to polish in which the final result should be a smooth animation with, for example, the toes overlap and the movements are correct and soft.
After this, we were asked to make the character do a turn around, so I blocked that action directly. It was confusing in the beggining because I was so used to always have a reference, but then I just got up and previewed the movements on myself and I think, as a first time doing it, it liked the final result.
This is the final result…