Walk Cycles

All people vary in the manner that they walk and mostly because of subconscious reasons. They reveal aspects of themselves without being completely consciously aware. It allows people external to them understand what may be in their thoughts through their body language. With animation one can make a character act out movements and body language to convey it’s thoughts to viewers.

‘Believability is in the realm of art, not purely the result of CPU power and memory bandwidth’ (Porter and Susman par.14). This statement is made by Tom Port and Galyn Susmam people who work at Pixar in response to questions from people concerning the believability in Pixar’s animations. Therefore one can’t solely rely on software and hardware but rather mainly on the animator’s ability to bring life into character’s

According to Porter and Susman:

The underlying notion of Pixar and Disney animation is that action is driven by the character's cognitive processes—that it reflects intelligence, personality, and emotion. The animator is constantly challenged to depict in an unmistakable yet compelling way that the brain is driving the action’ (par. 11)

Toby Gard, the character designer of Tomb Raider agrees that:

The way people walk suggests vasts amount of information about them, such as how they feel about themselves and their surroundings. (pg.5)

Therefore a character’s walk cycle should represent that the character is cognitively controlling their body to express their personality consciously and subconsciously. This instead of replicating what a character may appear as when they walk but also what they are thinking during their stride.

Mike Brown who is currently principal artist at High Moon Studios says that when he watches walking cycles in animation reels, he's looking for four key things: weight, timing, anticipation, and emotion’ (Duffy par.8). Though there are other animation principles, these seem to be the key elements the game company he works at is looking for in walk cycles.

What this essay will focus on is the emotion or personality of walks cycles.

‘Animation is acting’ (Porter and Susman par.15). The objective is not to simply mimic how a real person would walk but to rather abstract the key elements that express emotion and reveal personality though acting. Studying a live person’s walk can be used as source material for animation even if it is recorded. The primary movements, weight transitions, timing, anticipations and emotion of the character’s walk can then be exaggerated in the animation for a believable walk cycle. The following will be a description of three different personality walk cycles.

‘Character and personality are what make the walk real and make the audience identify with it on an emotional level’ (thinkinganimation.com). Disney animator’s were the first to get the audience emotionally captivated with their storylines by expressing characters in a way so that the viewer could relate to them. The objective is to encapsulate the viewer into the narrative of an animation through the conveying of expression through character’s body language.

Happy
A happy character would be full of life and. It would have light steps to express the lack of stress in on their mind. The high steps would be at a medium pace to show that their stride is not deferred by any negative thoughts. It would have a flexible posture to show a relaxed attitude towards its surroundings. There would be a large contrast between each low and a predominantly high step to show its liveliness. Arms would swing with high elbows in front of the body while the head bobs to express lack of tension. The movements of the character’s walk would generally express the happy thoughts of the character as it interacts with its surroundings

Sad
A sad character would have a lack of liveliness. It would have low steps that hit the ground harder than a happy character. They would move at a slow pace to express the lack of motivation. A hunched posture would show its self-exclusion from its surroundings. There would be less contrast between the predominantly low stance and the higher stance. The dragging arms and hanging head would express its lack of will. The movements would express unhappy thoughts and lack of hope.

Angry
An angry character would walk in a focused manner on what it is pursuing. The pace would be faster than the other movement’s because of it’s pusruit of whatever made it angry in the first place. The character would lean more forward than a happy character. The stance would be lower than the happy character yet higher than the sad character. Its posture would be hunched and firm yet not as low as a happy character. The arms would be curved and stiff and the elbows would be raised higher towards the character’s posterior. The head will be more stiff and focussed on it’s objective. The movements would generally express the anger of the character about what it is focussed on and what it is not focussed on.

In conclusion there are endless interpretations one could express though walking cycles in animation. These are determined by the animators understanding of animation principles and their acting abilities.



Works Cited:

Duffy, Jill. “Ask the Experts: Animations Show Reels”. Game Career Guide. 13 April 2008 http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/494/ask_the_experts_animation_show_.php

Gard, Toby, “Building Character”. 2000. Gamasutra. 13 April 2008 www.gamasutra.com/features/20000720/gard_pvf.htm

Porter, Tom, and, Susman, Galyn. “On site: Creating lifelike character’s in Pixar movies “. Portal: Greater Western Library Alliance. Association for Computing Machinery. 13 April 2008 http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/330000/323839/p25-porter.html?key1=323839&key2=0501018021&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=23989445&CFTOKEN=40584935

http://thinkinganimation.com/walkcycles.php