This image is from the ‘Animators Survival kit by Richard Williams’. To help me do and complete my walk cycle we were given the image below to reference. Here I have animated the legs, shoulder, hips, legs and arms, I also have moved the body up and down to make the walk cycle more realistic. I will be using the graph editor to perfect and finalise movement of the whole body. This walk still needs a lot of work done to it to make it suitable for hand in. My first attempt at the whole walk cycle I lost, I am glad that I did because I am much happier with this outcome, this walk has less pop to the walk, it still does but I will get rid of this and ease it by either re-doing it or using the graph editor.

I also sometimes use motion paths for my main characters, but I don’t link them to it, I just have it there as a reference and something to aim at.This is my second attempt at the walk cycle. This is a great technique for background characters, as you say. KielFiggins: Nice tutorial! I’ve never seen this technique laid out so nicely before. Nice work! There’s a lot of personality in that walk cycle. I think this would be especially noticeable in a depressed walk like the one you have here. Without complicating things too much, just add in a few more keys on your main body controller to slow your characters forward movement right around the point of contact through to the toe pushing off. Then there is a sudden slowing as our leg muscles redirect that momentum from a downward (faceplant) trajectory to a forward walk. That being the case, our bodies are moving forward the fastest right at the point when our heel contacts the ground. Walking is a series of controlled falls forward. Once thing you can do to stop the foot sliding issue is not have the body move forward at a constant speed.

Maya walk cycle