Walk and Run Cycle! Any advice helps!

Artwork Focused Critiques
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#1

Hello! This is my first post here, I need some critique on my first attempts on a walk and run cycle. I’m trying to develop a game and I want to make sure the animations are fluid and “cartoonish” and not just lazily put together. I asked a few online friends and even though everyone says it’s good overall they all pointed out different things like “too much twisting” or “arms swing too much inward” and although they might not be animators or 3d artists, I’d like to trust that at least something is off or I’m just not understanding what they mean.

Firstly, I can find a way to fix the clipping on the butt, that’s not my main issue. The issues I can see on my own that I’d like to fix are; the walk cycle looks a little robotic and the arms in the run cycle maybe move too fast? Not entirely sure, maybe it’s not as bad as I think it is. Let me know though.

Anyways, I know animation takes time and weight painting can be a pain but I’d like to see what anyone on here has to say about the animations. It is low poly and the game is meant to be retro but if someone can give me some advice or tips in general, I’d greatly appreciate it!

link to walk cycle: https://gph.is/g/ZYprwQw

#2

First off, it looks decent.

An issue is the sense of weight - Walking is a repeated act of putting yourself off balance, making yourself fall forward, and then catching your fall with your other foot/leg. Right now, this character is swimming in air, moving up and down like a pogo stick along a diagonal axis.

And the arms are moving too fast, because they are also moving too far (too high in front and too much in).

The character has nice weight shifting from left to right and a good torso twist. The side angle shows how there is only major rotation of the torso, neck, and head along their local Z axes.

Also, are you messing with the interpolations at all, because the arms are really zipping in the middle of their arc?

3 Likes
#3

Thanks for the reply!

I’m glad you pointed out the weight issue, I knew something was off. For the walk cycle I followed this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4WvbsHz7UQ and loosely referenced some good walk animations I found on google. Looking back I can see I missed a few things.

Also, I’m still a beginner so i’m not entirely familiar with interpolation but as for the run, I heavily referenced this animation:

I followed it frame by frame (at least for the most part), the frames were out of place probably from scaling the keyframes, thats why they were zipping, but I actually just managed to fix it. As for the other issues I’m sure exist because I just looked at the frames of that animation in a video player and not have each frame in the viewport as a plane for sake of time, and that all I have is the side view. Either way I think referencing the animation worked a lot better, so I think I’ll reference more animations moving forward.

Other than that, I appreciate you taking the time to help! If you know any good resources for walk/run cycles let me know please.