The Magic of Walk Cycles

What is this course about?

Timeless style

Style is everything in animation. Well there’re also timing, acting, staging, antici…. Ok, so perhaps style is not everything in animation but a huge part of it nevertheless. When planning this course, I drew inspiration from the Golden Age of animation when such greats as Walt Disney and Max Fleischer laid the foundation for everything we’re doing here today. Yup, in this way, you can be sure that the knowledge you learn here will never go out of style.

Portfolio boost

Bring out another dimension in your walk cycles that will impress even the pickiest of viewers. How to do this? Well, the key word in this course is “smooth”. Yes, everyone likes watching a smooth walk cycle, it’s just a fact. Believe me cuz I just made it up. Fact or not, we all do like watching stuff that is perfected. So, don’t put your future characters in a choppy walk cycle, give them the Magic Walk Cycle treatment instead. Just make sure to turn off your Instagram notifications before you go to bed cuz your feed might go bananas after posting.

Level up your skill set

When I see that we already are doing a video game metaphor, I will take it one step further. This course is by no means the final boss. It’s more like that sword in the forest that you run around a whole game trying to find. Cuz you know that once you find it, you will be unstoppable. That’s why this course is for you. It’s a magical sword of animation knowledge. OK, now I just killed this metaphor, but you get it.

LESSON #1

My walk cycle set-up

In the first lesson we’ll take a quick look on how I set up my walk cycles for animation.

LESSON #2

Timing the upper body

The most crucial part of any Walk cycle, or animation for that matter, is the timing so in this lesson I’ll show you how I set the timing of my walk-cycle by animating the upper body first. We’ll also take a quick look on how you can illustrate cartoon hands in under 2 minutes.

LESSON #3

Leg & shoe animation

The difference between a good & amazing walk-cycle often comes down to how well you animate the legs & shoes so in this lesson I’ll show you a bullet proof way of getting that walk as smooth as butter. We’ll also take a quick look on how to design shoes in different poses.

LESSON #4

Clothes & hair animation

No detail will be left unturned when we’re finishing up our walk-cycle.. Especially not things like clothes and hair.. Adding motion to these is like adding the cherry to the cake.

LESSON #5

Angry walk cycle

We’ll make this angry brute stomp harder than a raging elephant.. And we’ll have 10x more fun than him whilst making it. We’ll also try our hands on animating a foot instead of a shoe.

LESSON #6

Sneaky walk cycle

Admit it, this lesson is so sneaky that you almost missed it.. Anyhoo, this is perhaps my favourite walk cycle in the bunch. We’ll also take a look on how to make some extra sneaky finger animations.

LESSON #7

Sad walk cycle

Not sure we’ll be able to cheer this clown up but at least we’ll be able to make him walk away from whatever is bringing him down. Here we’ll also try some more detailed shoe-animations.

LESSON #8

Dizzy walk cycle

You shouldn’t walk and drink magic potions cuz then it looks like this. Btw, we have a very special surprise in this lesson but you need to join to figure it out.