Walk Cycle- Part 3

Step C: Animating the Character

1. Select all the frames in all the layers and convert them to keyframes (right click/Convert to Keyframes)
   In Frame 1 and Frame 3 ( Front Contact Point and Back Contact Point, respectively) the Pivot is at its lowest point, this means that the character will dipdown a bit. In Frame 2 and Frame 4 ( Passing Pose 1 and Passing Pose 2) the Pivot is at its highest point, this means that the character will rise up a bit.
2. Select all the layer in Frame 1, Using the ‘Free Transform Tool’, squash the character approximately 5 pixels downwards.
3. Select all the layer in Frame 3, Using the ‘Free Transform Tool’, squash the character approximately 5 pixels downwards .
   
4. Go into the ‘leg01′ symbol. We are now going to change the pivot color from red to black and fill the legs with white color. These steps can be best demonstrated with the aid of the video below.
   [flashvideo file=wp-content/uploads/2010/05/working-with-legs.flv width=288 height=308 controlbar=over image=wp-content/uploads/2010/05/working-with-legs.jpg /]
   From Walk-Cycle studies, it is observed that when the left legs goes forwards and reaches its Front Contact Point, a Frame later the Right hand will reach its Front Contact Point, thus the swaying of the hands always has a one frame delay as compared to the legs. Thus using this principle lets animated the right hand. We really dont have to animated the left hand because its hidden behind the big body of the character.
5. In the ‘charTotal’ Symbol, at Frame 2 on layer ‘hand’, select the hand and using the ‘Free Transform Tool’, incline the hand slightly forward. At Frame 4 on layer ‘hand’, select the hand and using the ‘Free Transform Tool’, incline the hand slightly backwards.
   
6. Test the movie (Ctrl + Enter) to see the character’s walk cycle

Download the completed walk cycle. (For Flash 8 and above)

<Page 1: Animating the Legs .  <Page 2: Rigging the Character

I hope this tutorial was useful and helps you understand the basics of walk cycle. I shall be covering 8 frame and 16 frame walk cycles sometime soon.

 ”Good News, Everybody!” Lee Brimelow, the Flash evangelist and award-winning interactive designer has used assets from my walkcycle for his two part tutorial (here and here) on Sprite Sheets and Blitting. Click here to go to his site to learn new and innovative ways of using Flash in current day technology.

Disclaimer: This tutorial was made using Adobe Flash CS3