Animating a walk cycle

Today I started animating a walk cycle using a rig and character model that was provided.

I had a initial feeling that this would be a bit of an awkward task but the amount of exaggeration that is required even with a realistic walk threw me off a bit, at first I was keeping all of my body parts closer together than I should have.

I thought that realistic would be more refined but it turned out that even with a realistic animation the body parts need to be stretched out and placed further away from the body than I imagined.

I first started out adjusting the points around the model but then I was told that using the channel box gave a lot more to work with than what was shown with pivot points. as you can see with pictures below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see by the image on the left there is no pivot point for the knees and this is where the character box really comes in handy.

So far I have found it a little tedious trying to perfect the positioning of body parts as you can refine one but then if you forget about something else it can have repercussions, this happened to my with my legs ans hips. I started to get the legs into position but forgot about hip rotation while meant I then had to go over the legs once more.

I had Matt help me refine my first frame as I didn’t exaggerate as much as I should have.

This is my walk cycle so far.