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Ok, now that that is straightened out let's draw that leg in and put the animation together again...

I didn't like the way that leg looked anyway.

There we go, now he's walking better. What I'm going to do now is get rid of the light hitting the back leg. That will help push it behind the front leg.

That looks good. Now we need the arm movement. Since we have six frames for the leg animation, we need six for the arm animation. Unlike the leg animation, we shouldn't reuse the drawing we already made for the arm. When walking the arm never really goes completely straight like that. Unless that is in the characters personality.

So all I'm going to do is draw the stick arms on seperate layers, then fill them in just like I did the legs. Nothing different here.

Again, watch yourself walk, pay attention to your arms and how they move, it will help a lot.

I added a little flop to the wrist. This is what I ended up with.

The flop in the wrist is just utilizing follow through. When you walk, your hand isn't rigid. It sways with your body. So by making it drag behind when the arm is moving forward, and then making it drag behind when the arm is moving backwards, it adds a little more realism, or at least character to the animation.

Now I shall draw tha arm in.

I slowed the animation down a little so that he didn't zoom by so quickly. I think it looks good so I'm going to put the other arm in, the same way I put the leg in.

Right now I am dealing with a LOT of layers. But that's ok. Layers are my friend and they make animation a whole lot easier.

Now that looks just fine. There really is only one thing left to do. Add the bounce in his step and then crop him.

And what I ended up with is this:

So he walks. He has 6 frames of animation, 21 colours and a slight bounce in his step. I think it's pretty good for a days work.

Speaking of the work load. Yes. It does take a little bit of practice to get a walkcycle you can be happy with. Don't be afraid of the work. Because it's pretty damned rewarding to see your character finally move in a game.

Also, once you get one walk cycle done you can just take this guy and edit his colours and his face, and with wonderful layers, you can have a whole new character walking in half the time.

Someone said to me that a sideways walk cycle is easy, it's the front view ones that are hard. And I agree. Sideviews are very easy because half of the movement is covered by the body.

However, by keeping things simple, reusing the same animations for the other side of the body, and testing your animation at multiple stages, you should be able to figure them out in no time.

I drew these quickly and animated them.

Feel free to use them as reference for drawing or if all else fails take these images, put them into imageready or flash or paintshop pro or any program that will open up the frames individually, then scale them down till they match up with your drawing.

Make a new layer over the existing image and trace them.

And that's a walkcycle, if people need it I will make a tutorial on making a forward and backwards walk cycle but there isn't anything else to tell. It would just be me using my knowledge of the human body and the same ideas I used in this tutorial.

Also, if anyone wants this character to use as a base for their characters, just ask me and I'll send it along.

Next time I'm going to use this same character and make him do some things. Like bend down to pick something up, or reach above his head or even throw a ball. I'll try to teach you more about keyframes and easing in and easing out...

Until then, happy spriting!

love,
eric