Advanced Animation/ Project 1: Walk Cycle

28/05/2025 - 11/06/2025 / Week 6 - Week 8

Lim En Yu / 0354452

Advanced Animation / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media / Taylor’s University 

Project 1: Walk Cycle

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Instructions

2. Lectures

3. Project 1: Walk Cycle

4. Feedback

5. Reflection

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Instructions

Fig 1.1 Module Information

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Lectures

Week 7 Miro Board

Fig 2.1 Week 7 Miro Board

Week 8 Lecture Slides:

Fig 2.2 Week 8 Lecture Slides

Week 8 Miro Board

Fig 2.3 Week 8 Miro Board

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Project 1: Walk Cycle

For this task, we were instructed to animate two types of walk cycles: the vanilla walk and the attitude walk. A vanilla walk cycle is a standard, natural walk where the character walks normally without any added emotion or style. In contrast, an attitude walk involves animating the character to express a specific attitude or personality, adding more emotion and uniqueness to the movement. This exercise helped me understand the fundamentals of walk cycles and how to create variations that convey character and mood.

1. Explore and understand the rigs.

2. Find image/video reference for vanilla walk and attitude walk.

3. Observe the reference. Spot the extreme poses for contact, down, pass and up.

4. Set a project with these settings:

- Image size: 1280 x 720 (HD) or 720p

- Frame rate: 24fps

- Animate in Blender a vanilla walk animation, walking in the same spot with natural speed (2 steps a second) using pose to pose animation for the main action and straight ahead for getting the flexibility.

Vanilla Walk References

At the start, Mr. Kamal has guided us along the process. He demonstrated steps by steps while following the vanilla walk guide online. This week's class is online, I think it's actually harder for me to follow. I try my best to follow, while the steps that I have missed I rewatch the recordings.

Fig 3.1 References for Vanilla Walk

First we start with the contact pose, and duplicate it to the next frame. Next, copy again and flipped it to be another leg contact pose. Now we have a rough look and we continue to add the pass pose, where we need to lift the leg up. From there, I created the next keyframes for the down, passing, and up poses, ensuring the character's movement was smooth and natural. As I worked through the animation, I adjusted the poses to maintain proper timing and spacing, using the reference to guide the process and ensure the walk cycle flowed seamlessly.

Fig 3.2 Leg Pass Pose

Other than that, in order to make sure the person walk naturally and smoothly, the rotation of the hip is a must. The hip will tilt to the right when the left leg is stepping out. I have a bit confused at this part because it is a bit different from Mr Kamal one, but after I try it out by myself I decided to followed my own movement.

Fig 3.3 Leg Contact Pose with hip rotation

After finishing the leg part, we then only proceed with hand. Hand is much more easier than the lg part, as it only need to be swing with a little hand wrist twisting part. All I do is rotating one side of the hand, and flipped it at the corresponding frame of opposite hand.

Fig 3.4 Hand and wrist rotation

At the end, we need some final touch up on the overall movement, which is rotation of shoulder and hip. According to my own understanding, the direction of shoulder and the hip should be in different directions. I have tried it out by myseld, so even though it is a bit different from class tutorial, I followed my won feelings.

Fig 3.5 Shoulder rotation throughout walking

Finally, I have looked through again the overall movement of the hip by calculating the motion path to make sure it looked smooth and natural throughout the vanilla walk.

Fig 3.6 Hip rotation throughout walking

Fig 3.7 Final Outcome of Vanilla Walk 

Attitude Walk

After considering different emotions, I think the pose that showing the most attitude would be walking proudly and arrogantly (which is lansi in Chinese dialect). I LOVE this attitude!

So, I utilised the vanilla walk as we already have the basic walking frames and movements, but first what I need to do is changing the speed of walking which I need to extend the length between each frames. Therefore, I have relocated each of the frame nicely until I feel that it is a suitable speed of walking that could emphasize on the emotion.

Fig 3.8 Change the speed of walking

The leg does not change much as I have alrealy change the pace. So, I straightaway proceed with the hand movement. I also try to act this pose out so that I could know until which extend I raise up my hand would be suitable. After confirming with the rough pose, I animate it frame by frame.

Fig 3.9 Rotation of arm

The upper arm only controlling the whole angle of hand moving up, the forearm is in charge of how much the hand should curve and also where the wrist should face. The arm is putting down, it is facing outside, when it is lifted up, it is placed horizontally.

Fig 3.10 Rotation of forearm

For the rotation od the shoulder, I have increased it to maximize the expression of arrogant and proud. So the movement won't be so subtle, but also, the body would also be more straight and facing toward more to up.

Fig 3.11 Rotation of shoulder

Lastly, the final touch up would be the facial expressions. The most obvious changes would be the position of eyebrows and eye lids. I have lower down the eye lids to make it cover more parts of the pupil of eye so that it is showing "I don't want to look at you" attitude. And also the lips, it is slightly smiling but is sneer that kind of smile.

Fig 3.11 Face expressions

Fig 3.12 Final Outcome of Attitude Walk #1

Fig 3.13 Final Outcome of Attitude Walk #2

Final Compilation of Project 1: Walk Cycle

Fig 3.14 Final Compilation of Project 1: Walk Cycle

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Feedback

Vanilla Walk: The angle of shoulder moving is too much, so it might seems like a bit attitude in it, so the extent could be reduced.

Attitude Walk: Overall looks okay, just the angle could consider changing it from upper to lower as the camera angle match with the attitude.

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Reflection

This project was actually more interesting than I expected. At first, I thought walk cycles were just about making a character move from point A to B, but once I started working on the vanilla walk, I realized how detailed it is. Things like hip rotation, shoulder tilt, and even the way the wrist swings can make a huge difference. Since the class was online that week, I found it a bit hard to follow at first. I rewatched the recordings and figured things out by trying it on my own. It felt confusing at times, but also kind of satisfying when it started to look right.

The attitude walk was the part I really enjoyed. I picked a “lansi” kind of walk, arrogant and proud, because it’s fun and full of attitude. I changed the pacing, played with hand and facial expressions, and even acted it out myself to see what felt natural. It was honestly fun to exaggerate things and give the character a whole personality. Even though I made a few mistakes along the way, seeing it come together made me feel really proud. It made me realize animation is more than just movement. It is expression and performance too.

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