Post 41 – Walk On (Or Off, if you want to)
Today’s tutorial is about getting your character to walk across the screen instead of simply looping a walk cycle in place.
Up until now, I’ve been moving characters with the Transform tool. It works, but the walk cycle and the character’s movement are disconnected. Instead of the steps driving the motion, it often looks like the character is ice skating (or sliding) across the screen. My Moho hack was to keep adjusting the speed of the layer transform until it looked close enough. It got the job done (sort of).
The additive cycle solves this problem. Each step actually moves the character forward, so the movement comes from the walk itself.
Things to Know:
✔ Add an onion skin.
✔ Simple Walk Cycle.
✔ Move your character across screen.
Additive Walk Cycle
- Frame_01 Create your first step, CTRL+F to freeze pose (your keyframes).
- Frame_13 Create your next step, turn on onion skins (Frame_1) and then match
your characters feet into the same pose (opposite legs),
CTRL+F to freeze pose.
3. Frame_13 While still on this frame, you will select all the bones (using select bone tool) and then grab the transform tool.
Frame_13 With the transform tool selected, hold the Alt key and move all the bones (entire character) over, where the foot meets the last step(see image).
4. Frame_25 Copy all the keyframes from Frame-01 (CTL+C),
and paste them onto Frame_25 (CTL+V).
***you will notice it will move your character back to the original position***
5. Frame_13 To fix this, put an onion skin on frame 13.
6. Frame_25 Select all the bones, move the character forward, match the foot.
This should set your contact poses (extreme poses) moving forward.
Frame_01
Frame_13
Frame_25
Now you can add your passing poses, and up/down movement.
7. Frame_7 adjust passing pose
8. Frame_19 adjust passing pose
9. Frame_4 down pose
10. Frame_10 up pose
11. Now copy the up/down keyframes (CTL+C), but this time go to
Edit “Paste Relative” to paste poses on the second step (Frames_16 & Frame_22).
Paste Relative: Pasting the same movement, but it is happening in a different place.
Frame_25. Select all the keyframes, click Cycle, set Interpolation: Absolute 2.
Now your character will be cycling while moving forward (not in place).
BUT get ready for the fun part, on Frame_25 select all your key frames again and click additive cycle. And like magic💫!! Your little guy will keep on walking……and walking, and walking, and walking….
“Is this the best I can make today? Have I gone further than I have before ? ”
— Rick Rubin
Adventure Mouse Walks On
So, I realize that we have a little bit of a sassy shoulder here, the more I learn the less I know. The truth is, at first I accidently made him walk backwards, before walking forward. There has to be some kind of metaphor for life here…like sometimes you have to go backwards, before moving on?
I also wanted to give the character a little more weight and life by adding a heavier bounce to his walk. The problem was that every time I pushed the movement a little further, I broke the cycle in a major way. So I eased back and went for the minimum. At some point I would love to be able to push the extremes and not break anything . goals.
Post 41 — Afterthoughts
I watched this Lessons on Creativity, this week, again, so inspiring.
At night, I’ve also been mucking around with a book from 21 Days to Learn Anatomy , I originally bought for my son. It wasn’t cheap, but is a great little primer on human anatomy.
A moon ago I had purchased this 2d Animation Course and made this little Nisse.
Currently, 21 Draw is running a special for their yearly membership that includes all of their courses. A steal of a deal at $59.
And no, I don’t get anything from 21 Draw saying this. I just genuinely love their resources.
Of course, every time I think of doing something …I think, how can I bring this in Moho? There aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do in Moho.
walk, walk, walk 👣Nik
