Front Walk Cycle
As an animator, one of the first things you have to learn is a walk cycle. I've done plenty of side view walk cycles - both bipedal and quadrupedal. With this project, I wanted to challenge myself slightly and do a walk cycle from the front.
Before I could even begin, I looked up some reference images - since I had never done a front facing walk cycle before, these images from a tutorial by Pilar Newton gave me plenty of starting ground. I used the frames above as a guideline for where each step should be placed and built the rest of my animation from there.
Onto the storyboards, I laid out exactly how I wanted the character to move as the time went on. Since I wanted to focus mainly on appendage movement (legs, arms, tail, and ears), I simplified the design down to the bare essentials. I wanted to convey a bouncy, prideful manner of movement in their stride, so while moving forwards, I had them raise their arms.
The flames were a later addition - I wasn't entirely sure if I wanted to keep them, but running with the idea that this character is a powerful figure, the fire adds to the effect and gives a sense of drama.
These are a few of my favorite stills from the animation. The first image was the one that gave me the most difficulty, since the paw needed to be raised at an angle while also giving the feeling of falling in space. Eventually I landed on a rendering I was happy with. The second image gave me some similar issues, this time with the upper leg.
The final image was actually the design I started with when developing the animation. I wanted a lot of movement while keeping the character fairly stationary, so each piece I could use was put into motion.
One of my favorite parts of this animation is the bounce frames, showcased in the full video. With the added movement of the ears and hands, the character's walk gains so much more personality than it would have had had it been left static.
