In Chapter 8, Shake That Body: The Mechanics of Body Movement we saw both the technical aspects and body mechanics needed to create a run cycle. Now it's time to bring a little emotion into it.
A "personality" walk is nothing more than taking the emotional state of your character into account when creating the cycle. Refer to the W.O.F.A.I.M. technique at this chapter's introduction to ask and answer a few important questions before you begin.
In this recipe, we're going to create a "happy" walk. Let's imagine our character walking home just after receiving some good news. Maybe he's just got a promotion at work. He wants to celebrate, but he has to hold himself a bit because his boss is still looking at him. His walk must show this "controlled celebration".
Technically speaking, this chapter is quite similar to other recipes talking about cyclic runs and walks. The main difference is the subjectivity behind the creation of poses and the timing adjustment.
- Open the file
010-WalkStyle.blendand you'll see our character Otto with some clothing and in its rest position, as seen in the following screenshot:
- Go to the side view (Numpad 3) and let's pose our character in its first key position. Since this is not a "regular" walk, it's important to use the animation principle of exaggeration.
We're going to use the first key position as the moment where our character makes contact with the ground using his left foot. Since acting nuances are a matter of personal choice, feel free to make this contact position as you wish. The following screenshot shows an example of this first pose in both front and side views. Notice how the position of the limbs and torso are exaggerated in comparison to a regular walk.
- When you're happy with the first pose, select all related bones and insert a keyframe for them (I) in frame 1. Go up a few frames (we're not thinking of timing yet, so we can set a fixed 10 frames for each pose) and insert the Breakdown position, where his left leg is straight up, supporting his body. The next screenshot shows an example of it:
After creating the Breakdown, let's create the next key pose. This is the next contact position, where the right foot touches the ground.
- Go back to frame 1, and select all body controls except the
Foot.Rbone (see why in the next Information box) in the 3D View. Press Ctrl + C to copy their transformation. - Go 10 frames after the Breakdown pose and press Ctrl + Shift + V with your mouse cursor over the 3D View. This will paste the flipped pose of our first contact position to serve as the starting point for our second key position. Notice that things will look weird, since flipping the first key pose will make our character go back in space to the position of the first step, as shown in the next screenshot:
- Now it's just a matter of selecting the
Hipsand theFoot.Rbones and moving them (G) forward, and our pose will look normal again. Select all body controls and insert a new keyframe for them here.Note
When copying the first key pose to make a flipped version, we didn't select the
Foot.Rbone. When pasting a flipped pose, theFoot.Rtransformation would be applied to theFoot.Lbone, but theFoot.Lbone was already planted on the ground in the Breakdown pose. We need to keep theFoot.Lbone in its place to avoid any "slipping" during the walk. - Repeat this process to add a new Breakdown position based on the one you have already created and a final key position, which should be a copy of the first keyframe set (but, of course, two steps ahead). The next screenshot shows an overlay of these positions:
Once you have your Extreme and Breakdown poses set, it's time to work on the remaining poses. Now you can play with the timing and intermediate poses to bring even more "style" to this walk cycle. You can speed up the Breakdowns, emphasizing the contact key positions. The intermediate poses can be exaggerated, adding funny movements (such as little jumps) instead of just following the "natural" curve of motion.
Note
It's always good, for organization's sake, to define the colors of each keyframe set on the DopeSheet. Select all keyframes set in frame 1, for example, press R and choose Extreme. This will give a reddish hue to those saved positions. Repeat that with Breakdown and Keyframe, or leave the default color for additional positions in order to make it what you need on the DopeSheet timeline easier to find.
Another way of bringing "happiness" to this walk is to refer to a widely used kind of cycle in the 1930's: the double-bounce walk. This is achieved by adding a second "down" position to a regular walk.
Normally our body goes down in a walk just after the contact of the foot with the ground, going up to the Breakdown position. In a double-bounce walk, we keep this down position and add another just after the "up" position of the Breakdown. This was often in sync with the upbeat music of the cartoon.
- Go a few frames after your Breakdown position and add two more positions: one down and another up, in this order. This is what we need to achieve the second "bounce". The next screenshot shows the difference between our regular (above) and double-bounce (below) walk:
- Once you're done with your happy walk cycle, you can make it really cycle using the NLA Editor, in the process described in Chapter 8,
The finished example for your reference is in the file 010-WalkStyle-complete.blend.
By carefully adjusting the timing and creating exaggerated poses, you can turn a regular (and boring!) walk into something appealing. The careful construction of the 'in between' poses, without making them simply follow the imaginary path described by the Extremes and Breakdowns, can make your motion very interesting. Knowledge of animation's tried and tested historic techniques also helps, so you can be inspired by the old animation masters' legacies, such as the use of the double-bounce method in this recipe.
Appendix: Understanding Extremes, Breakdowns, Inbetweens, ones and twos
Chapter 6: Animating in layers
Chapter 7: Easy to Say, Hard to Do: Mastering the Basics
Chapter 8: Run, Forrest! (in cycles)