Animating a walk, where do we begin. Well first we need a character. For today's lesson we're going to use Mr.Stickman. Next we need a clear and simple method of approaching walks in general. I didn't come up with the technique that follows. I gleaned most of this from Richard Williams book 'The Animator's Survival Kit'. If you find this tutorial useful I highly recommend you pick up a copy. We're going to use a pose to pose method to animate today's walk. At 24fps a walk will usually range anywhere from 8 frames per stride for a brisk pace, to 16 frames for a leisurely stroll. In order to be clear I'm going to animate at 24fps and make each stride 12 frames (march time). Let's begin animating a walk with the contact poses. This is basically mid stride where the heel strikes the ground. Contrary to what you might think, this is the part of a walk that has the least amount of weight. It's the pose directly after this, or the down pose that sells the weight. We'll get to that much later. For now let's concentrate on this pose. Go ahead and pose every part of your character on frame 1. Make sure the forward leg striking the ground is straight (knee is not bent) otherwise your character may look like he's carrying a load in the back of his pant's. Also make sure you add a little vertical torsion in the hips and shoulders (i.e., twist the torso slightly). Now advance the time 12 frames (frame13) and do the the next heel strike pose. Remember to key everything on your character. The final heel strike pose will happen 12 frames later on frame 25. It should look something like this.
