Animated Walk Cycle

I was to create a walk cycle animation using Adobe After Effects, as covered in class. The goal was to incorporate drawings/designs I made and then rig them. I was to show a walk cycle of a human, animal, or another type of creature or being. I also had to incorporate a parallax background so that your character has an environment to live in.

During my first semester in Rich Media Communications, as part of my final assignment, I was tasked with creating a walk cycle animation video of a human, animal, or any other type of creature using after effects. I had to use appropriate drawings/designs made on paper and scanned or created in a graphics program such as Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop and then rig and animate. There was also the addition of incorporating a parallax background so that our character has an environment to live in.

My walk cycle animation consisted of a little girl and her dog walking through the countryside while the city they live in is in the background. The hills and trees are moving backgrounds to emulate the effect they’re walking past them when they’re not actually moving.

I wanted this walk cycle to be simple and not complex, so I decided to have it be about a girl and her dog walking through the countryside. To that end, I designed the girl and the dog in Illustrator before importing them into after effects to rig them.

This was when the problem began to arise as I began rigging my character to walk. I was having trouble making it look natural like it was actually walking and not skipping or running, as I couldn’t just have the legs look like they were just back and forth, back and forth. To fix that problem, I had to use a walking animation chart to base my walking movements on. Though that wasn’t easy, I kept going through multiple charts until I found the correct cycle I was happy with. The dog was much easier as I could use a more straightforward walk style of going back and forth.

I did backgrounds regarding the buildings, hills, trees, and other scenery in Illustrator. The city was in the background behind a few hills and a lake. After that, three rows of trees were scattered around before the sidewalk where the girl and dog were walking; the foreground is a row of hills and roses. For the walk cycle itself, neither character was actually moving; the background parts were moving background to make it look like they were moving. Each section moved at a different speed to make it look natural, not just a 2D background.

This was the first of many projects that involved me having to rig, and so far, I’ve improved a lot since this. For a first-time project, I feel this turned out really well, and I’m happy with the end results.