Animation: Walk Cycle

Design Process

To first assist me with structuring the character that I will be using in my walk cycle, I looked at the human skeleton and how it moves to know which limbs will be needed in my character.
The most helpful one of these I found was "Norman"
A 3D model animated in Maya.

As Norman didn't have any details it was very easy to see where I could use anchor points to create natural limb movement.




To also help in the creation I used a side profile view of the human shape to design proportional limbs.


Basing my character from this diagram of a natural human posture with the joints seen in the Norman video, I was able to produce a female character to begin animating in After Effects

After I had fully finished designing my character and making it compatible for this type of animation I then proceeded to import into After Effects and animate her movements based on the YouTube video below, matching up my animation movements with the side profile view.

Evaluation

The animation has come out very well, with the loop being almost seamless and the character does appear to be walking in a believable way, this may be credited to my use of the mentioned YouTube video to synchronize my characters movements to that of a real person. I have also included additional joints when compared to my previous walk cycle, most noticeably in the toes, which now bend as she walks.

There are two main problems I see in this animation, firstly the hands move significant different lengths through the cycle, with the background hand moving much more than the foreground. This may have been mainly due to me exaggerating the background movement to make sure it could be seen as it was covered by the body, though it may have been exaggerated too much. 

The other problem being in the movement of the upper body, it seems slightly too stiff and robotic and not relaxed like it should be in a human walk cycle, this could be improved by better manipulation of the lower and upper spine joints I have implemented, but as is, does not make the animation as a whole seem too inhuman.