Experimental walk cycle animation
 

Hi. I was kind of bored yesterday, and decided to test myself at making a walk-cycle animation. I made a very simplistic pixelly-looking guy, reminiscent of older games. I didn't do any preliminary sketches, so his walk looks a bit weird, and out of sync. Took me about an hour and a half to make the 8 images that make up his walk cycle. I've used 6 of them.

http://img46.echo.cx/img46/4558/ugly...lelarge7qk.gif

That's him, and this is the test of his gait against a quickly drawn background.

http://img46.echo.cx/img46/4752/spoz...ikaduza6ze.gif

What do you guys think?

i think it looks really good, great work!

and his walk doesn't look bad it just looks like he's limping...

if you do decide to make a game around this character you should name him gimppy...

It looks very good, except for a significant detail: He moves his rigth arm together with his right leg, and his left arm together with his left leg.

However, most mammals (including humans) move their right arm together with their left leg, and their left arm together with their left leg. It is automatic - you move like that without being aware of it most of the time. That's why it is easy to spot when somebody tries to maintain the rythm of their movements willingly. They often end up moving like this little guy.

- :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

Wow, you've got a very good eye! Now I get what's wrong with him! Thanks. :P Maybe this can be fixed without too much work...

BTW, here are the 2 pics I haven't used. First, the guy in his standing position. I tried to give him some character, but his "flighty" walk cycle is completely contrary to it.
http://img37.echo.cx/img37/7923/stojilarge1ny.png

This weird second picture is transitional between the standing and walking positions. Turned out I couldn't use it.


http://img37.echo.cx/img37/1503/1large6kk.png

I finally got around to taking Jazy's advice. Here is the new, fixed walk cycle, with the old one for comparison.

http://img172.echo.cx/img172/2613/hodabig2uj.gif

http://img46.echo.cx/img46/4558/ugly...lelarge7qk.gif

This new one (top) looks way more natural, & better, if I do say so myself. :P

I'd like to hear some comments & advice from "published" or experienced underground developers? :) I.E. How many pics do you make per walk cycle, how many different walk cycles do you make (I'm guessing 3--face, back and side, which can be rotated?) What's your process, etc.

BTW, Gimppy (thanks Gah Gah :shifty: ) is not a character I would build a game around. Just look at the way he's dressed! :P If I do decide to make a game, I'll ask Trepsie for fashion advice on what my character should wear. ;) "Queer Eye for the Straight game guy" kinda thing. :D

Since this thread is turning out to be largely a monologue, :shifty: I'll just keep posting my various tests...and stuff. Make it a developer's diary. For my eyes only! :P

Here's another comparison. The top image is the newer walk cycle against the background, with the older one on the bottom. I've used the evenly spaced fence-posts in the background for animations' pacing, but their speeds may differ a bit, I dunno why...:crazy: The new one still looks very amateurish, but I think it shows a marked improvement. Thanks Jazy! ;)

http://img129.echo.cx/img129/5503/hodaspozadinom9hg.gif

http://img14.echo.cx/img14/5849/spoz...sporija6mi.gif

edit: the bottom one is faster 'cause it has a frame less. I'll try and fix it...

:9 <--Marko hard at work.

edit2: voila! :D ...I think. :shifty:

I think there should be up and down motion in his whole body when he walks and I think he's maybe leaning backwards a bit much.

I think it looks very unnatural... slow the animation down a bit and try to think about each what the character does each frame....

but first read this article:

http://www.idleworm.com/how/anm/02w/walk1.shtml

Well, it's way better than anything I could ever do, so I say well done so far. :)

My main suggestion is his left foot, it seems to kick up a little too high and he almost appears to slightly jump each time his left foot comes all the way forward.

And by the way, I appreciate you posting this--this is exactly the sort of thing this forum could be and should be used for.

Thanks for the comments guys. :)

The reason it didn't take much time at all to make this is because his waist is a straight line, and his torso a block that doesn't move. :P All I did to animate him was to flail his head, arms and legs around. Sometimes I didn't even draw new positions for those, but would just rotate the body segments...This lazy-ass approach would've been even easier if I wasn't doing it in paint!

But anyway, as I said, I didn't do any sketches. I'm sure I can do better. Thanks for all the suggestions. :D

No problem. ;)

He looks as if he's walking backwards. I've been trying to figue out why, but I'm not a skilled animator myself either (yet :) ), but I have a guess: I think it's beacuse the leg is moving slower when moving forward than when moving back. His left leg in particular. (And looking back at this thread, I see that Stinger already commented on that foot.)

One thought I read in an animation tutorial that I've found to be helpful is to "think of the walk as a controlled falling". Think about that one for a while, and it'll make sense. (It was either in that one linked to by Jezze, which is a very good one, or in a book on animation.) It'll still be hard to get the walk right, though.

Fixing the camel-walk helped, btw. (Camels are AFAIK the only animals that walk like that. I know a word for it in Swedish, but not in English.) It looks better now.

Aaargh! (Sorry, but it's not exactly the best tool for the job.)

I know. :P Paintshop is actually my favorite tool for drawing, but I don't have it installed right now. Soon though, I'm gonna to set up my own "studio" in my room, with a scanner and drawing pad that I own (my brother's generous birthday gifts ;) ), and I'll be able to get a bit more serious about this hobby. :D

BTW, will you show us some of the stuff you've done?

Well, I gotta say, that tutorial has really helped me to understand the principles of walking. Thanks, Jezze :P.

I've made a quick test animation (took me about half an hour) consisting of 8 frames (like in the tutorial). It's just a simple stickman, over whom I might draw a real character. By making stickmen, I imagine I'll be able to experiment with different "attitudes", genders, etc. I really only drew 4 of those frames, and then switched the shading on the arms and legs. ;) But here it is. I think it looks better than the other guy, even at this stage of development. :D

http://img136.echo.cx/img136/9213/stickman8xl.gif

Looking good! (And he has attitude.)

Here's my avatar walking:
http://trumgottist.com/tmp/mathiaswalk.gif

Nice! Quite detailed, with, it seems like, many images going into the animation. Can we know more about the game this guy will be starring in? :P

It's a game currently put on hold, beacuse it's a collaboration and the writer got lack of time. I'm instead working on a game on my own now while I'm hoping that we'll be able to get back to this one later.

I think I've figured something out. The advantage of having the character slide across the animation opposite of the way he walks towards (as if he was on a running machine, trying to keep up with it) is that, once you make him move across a background, his foot will stay firmly planted in one spot, until he lifts it. This is what I was aiming for when I made the animation I already showed you, and the new one underneath it.

http://img136.echo.cx/img136/9213/stickman8xl.gif

http://img104.echo.cx/img104/5291/hoda5ho.gif

Thanks! :) I'd say badass is the attitude. :P

That's looking nice.

I hope you don't mind, I opened your animation with my gif making program, to observe your methods. :P

12 pictures going into this is quite an impressive number, especially at this resolution. ;) A lot of time must've gone into this. Care to share? :D

Btw, I think some kind of up and down hair motion, due to the high-point/low-point nature of the walk, would do wonders to liven his face up. :)

One thing about Trum's animation that I noticed compared to yours, Mares, is that the walking motion is very continuous and fluid. Your new animation is much better but what sticks out to me is how deliberate and isolated each step is. It looks more like a series of large, caveman-like steps rather than one fluid walk. I think part of it may be that his back is hunched a bit too much.

I have zero, and I mean zero, visual art skills, so I may be way off base here but those are my impressions. I think this thread is proving very educational, though. :)

I have a friend that does some 3D animation using lightWave. Mostly for TV News Promos and TV and Radio commercials. He showed me an option when rendering animation that makes it look more real, Motion Blur. It simulates the look that you get when you shoot a real object moving in film and video. In film and video you are not capturing a perfect slice of time, you are capturing all the motion that happened while the shutter was open. We even see this a lot with our own vision. We see blurred motion so often that when we don't see it our brains know something is wrong.

Some good links:

http://www.revisionfx.com/mblur/lenblur.mov
http://digilander.libero.it/F1Land/3...otionblur.html
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/cpl/projects/blur/
http://www.revisionfx.com/mblur/dinoBlur.mov

This software looks cool. I'm sure it could be utilized for adventure game animations.
http://www.lostmarble.com/

Of course I don't mind. I posted it here, didn't I?

I don't know how much time went into it (as I wrote, it was a while ago), but it took a while, yes. (It was faster than my earlier and uglier attemts at animating a walk, though.) If/when I get back to it, I'll probably add 12 frames more. Then I'd get one frame per frame. Right now, he moves every second frame without the animation changing which makes it slightly shaky.

The more natural your character looks, the more natural he has to move if it's not going to look strange. Have you seen Richard Longhurst and the Box that Ate Time? It's one of the first AGS games, with graphics that are... not pretty. The walk animation of the hero basically consists of flashing different colours on the right and left leg. It works (and even looks pretty cool) on those crude graphics, but with more realistic graphics it doesn't work. We can identify with a smiley, but a realistic human face with only one small detail a bit off looks strange.

Doing a walk can be very hard work (at least for a newbie like me) but it's very satisfying to see the character walk around in the game, so it's absolutely worth it trying to get past those randomly moving parts of the body.

Agreed. If/when I get back to it, I should work on the head. As you can see, that part is a simple cut and paste through all frames.

My current game has two non-human main characters. One of them is easy to animate, but the other one has been harder to get right. I've settled for a walk that, while not realistic (don't analyse how he's actually moving!), is fluid enough not to disturb. (I think. It'll be interesting to hear other people's comments when that time comes.) Their walks work well with two frames per frame, though. Probably since they're simpler.

Thanks for the inspiration, btw! I've not been in a state where I've been able to work on my game for the past two weeks, but today I really feel like getting started again.

You're right on all counts. His steps really are too large, and that's why the discrepancy between each frame is more noticable. Consider also that this walk cycle is made of 8 frames, while Trum's cycle, with steps far les drastic, is 12. I wish I had noticed your "caveman" comment before. The only attitude I thought this animation resembled was that of a badass biker, so that's why I made it into a Ben look-alike. ;) A caveman would've been far more original. :P But anyway, here's the animation I drew over the stickman (not cleaned up, or colored yet).

Stickman
http://img136.echo.cx/img136/9213/stickman8xl.gif

Biker

http://img254.echo.cx/img254/6871/hodacova8st.gif

Hard to believe it's made by the same person that made that first post.

Lol! Thanks! :P It's understandable, seeing as how I've spent so much more time and thought on this one, and am not even done yet. I'm still being slave to the low tech process of Paint, though! :D

I think it would be comical to compare the two animes.

http://img254.echo.cx/img254/6871/hodacova8st.gifhttp://img172.echo.cx/img172/2613/hodabig2uj.gif

lol! It looks like the biker dude is pissed and about to beat up our nerdy looking friend! :D

btw, at this size, I think he'd fit in rather well in a 680*400 resolution game?

I'd love to see that biker animation with double the framerate

I've been thinking about doing that.

I know you called the 'biker' a Ben from Full Throttle knock off, but he looks more like a 50's tough guy to me.

I agree. He reminded me a bit of Elvis.

Waaaah! They are about to COLLLIIIIIIDDDDEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!


- :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

Hmmm...Must be the hair-do. :P And possibly the leather jacket. However, do the baggy pants and boots really fit in with that image?

Hey, it's John Travolta!

Hehe, just kidding ;)

Great animation!

--Erwin

Nah. The nerdy one is trying to back away. :P

perhaps he's a 50's mechanic!

I dunno what he is. The way I've colored him, he looks like some mountain hick.

http://img254.echo.cx/img254/6871/hodacova8st.gif http://img138.echo.cx/img138/3362/hodabeli2ow.gif http://img138.echo.cx/img138/2903/bojeni9fd.gif

The style (black outlined, colored and shaded inside) reminds me of an experimental background I've made a while back, so the next test I try will be juxstaposing the animation agains this.

http://www.geocities.com/markabodija2/garazafin.JPG

Congratulations on a fantastic animation and background,,,

it is looking promising!

A suggestion for the background: Unless there are two suns, the light won't be showing on both sides of the window. It's either to the left, right, or front. Also, if the light is coming from outside, it is unlikely to be seen on the wall that the window is set in. But if you emphasize the wall (add thickness to it), the light would be visible on the side of the alcove that the window would be set in.

You might want to let the shelf create a triangle of shadow in the lightbeam of the lamp, along the wall.

Otherwise it looks great.

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On the other hand, it currently works fairly well to show where the light is coming from. It's not light on the wall, but a ray of light shining in through the window. The light on the lawn-mover is odd, though, and some more shadowing on e.g. the speakers, the drums and the garden tools would be nice.