Walk Cycle

For my birthday, which was like one or two months ago now, i got that 'animators survival kit'. Its a bargain really, you can learn animation from it and also build up your muscles because its so heavy.

Its way to overwhelming when you skip through it, (i left it on the shelf for a month or two because of this, it was too much to take in), but when you concentrate on just one bit its really helpful.

I've done walk cycles in the past, three or four, but I just used to do it from my head, didn't know where to start, didn't know where to end, just drew something which i thought looks pretty cool. They did look cool and I'm amazed I even did them after looking at how much thought and planning actually goes into a walk cycle.
The guy who wrote the book (Richard Williams) gives a nice easy way of learning how to make a walk cycle, but before that he talks about people and how different everyone walk is, womens, mens and he even gives a story about when he saw a 'gay walk' which was interesting.

So when I did a walk cycle I started at frame 1 and ended at frame what ever, Richard Williams on the other hand says the best thing to do is draw the first and last frame (which are both the same except the legs are now the opposite way) then draw the passing position (middle one, kind of) and then from there, do the inbetween of the start to the middle and middle to end, and so on...

I did one from reading the book, went along with the instructions. Its a copy of one he did, but i thought its best to do that and learn than try something fancy straight off and fuck it up and get really annoyed and throw the book out of the window and kill someone because of how heavy it is. Anyway here it is...

___________________________________________________________________________
 update


The above was a copy (i explained why), but thought I'd try my own now I have the technique sorted...

So the one below is one I did, remembering what I'd learned from the book. I went for a character with a hunchback, with the head very low with his back coming over the top...but still had his head looking up, so he dosnt look sad, looks more angry...like he's on his way somewhere.

Too make him look like he's carrying himself and give the illusion of weight what i did was this (by the way i learned this from going back to it and doing stuff to it...then watching it....going back to it....watching it....going back to it) on his lowest frame when his leg is bent the most, the frame after that, his his head goes lower whilst his body goes higher (Its that cat tail thing)

All that makes the stomp down look really weighty...in my opinion.

Its only like 10 frames and not smooth, but I think you get a sense of weight etc from it...