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walk cycles

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walk cycles

walk cycles??? any way to improve this?
http://www.geocities.com/gabemarchionda/cloudripple.html
ps: I also noticed my bitmaps are kinda pixelated, any way to fix this????

In my mind, there's always a way to improve a walk cycle. Always. Try to show more more flexibility in the joints of the arms and hands. If you feel it out and delay the timing of each part his whole upper body could become looser, and that's generally more appealing unless in the previous scene he just got the horseflies scared out of him. If you want to go in with more detail on the entire torso itself you could show how the upper body compensates for the movement of the legs. You could give him feet instead of hooves. While feet are useful for locomotion they'd also act graphically here as a device for showing weight. That's all mechanics though. You might want to consider the background and current mood of your character. Once you've got "meat" to fill in the blank to your every creative problem, doing something like this becomes ten times as easier, because now you have a goal.

Phacker can confirm, but I believe there is an option in Flash while you're saving out to ensure the file defaults to High Quality antialiased viewing. When I viewed yours I didn't see pixelization so maybe it happened that while you were viewing it your options were different.

Flash Option?

Hello.

As a 2D traditional guy- I would say the trouble with the walk has nothing to do with joints - but rather, the absence of weight...no squash and stretch, tranferrance of weight, or flexibility of the back and the reversing the spine.

Check out my walk lesson at the Toon Institute.

www.awn.com/tooninstitute

The concept of beginning with an emotion is good- but emotion=weight ...think about that one.

Thanks

Just an observation, you have the arms and legs of the same side of the body going forward and back at the same time. When the front leg is forward, the front arm should be back.
It sounds simple, but what honestly helps me out the most is going through the motions myself, and noting how the body moves.
Good luck!

I would say the trouble with the walk has nothing to do with joints - but rather, the absence of weight

That's certainly the biggest issue, but people don't walk with stiff arms (or as Sukie noticed, arms that follow the same-side leg) either. Just trying to hit all the points.

Opposites....

Hello.

Gee...my bad, couldn't see the arms and legs enough to note whether they were opposite or not....

Still. I think you should go to my "walk" lesson- it will be a huge help!

Thanks.

Hi Gabe, check out Larry's tutorial. It covers all the stuff you'll need to learn about a walk cycle. One thing that hasn't been mentioned, is that your character is limping. I'm not saying each step has to be exact, it's better if they aren't, but your guy has an obvious limp. His upperbody shows a limp, but his legs seem to be taking even steps.

I think the best thing you can do is take this character and all his symbols and do Larry'e tutorial. Once you've gone through the whole tutorial, try different walks. A sad walk, happy, skip, run, tired, angry, etc.

Keep at it. Walks are hard, and you'll always have to do them when you are a professional. So learn the basics right at the begining.

Aloha,
the Ape

...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."

Hey Erik, where was the Foster's style walk from about a month or so ago? Show and Tell? That was a fantastic use of Flash for a walk cycle.

Flash Help

If you are using Flash then I would say to go and look at:

cartoonsmart.com

He has lessons on walk cycles that you can purchase and it explains a lot about walk cycles. Once you watch it it will all come together.

Now your joints, everything from the neck down are important when making a realistic walk cycle.