Experimentation: Teacher Walk Cycle

I've taken some time to properly realise this shot in Scene 2, in which the teacher is shown walking down the classroom handing back test papers. The angle is a bit odd, and I've been struggling to figure out the walk cycle. 

Animatic: Scene 2, Shot 2

Early walk cycle test 

My initial test of the walk cycle without any reference footage was not anatomically correct at all. The legs moved unnaturally and it looked awkward. Because of this, I took some reference footage to get a sense of the body position. 

Version 2 of keyframes

Using my initial round of reference footage, I created the above version. I was still not happy with it however. Through conversation with one of my peers, I found that the position of the feet and the timing of the actions wasn't as resolved as I wanted it to be. In the initial reference video, I didn't include the arm movements, so I struggled with timing the foot movements and the arm movements together. This resulted in a lot of trial and error, and no resolutions I was happy with. 

So I recorded another round of footage of myself performing the actions, this time handing out papers to desks and walking towards the camera. I rotoscoped some keyframes in Photoshop, which gave me a much better sense of the body's movements and interaction with its surroundings. 

Rotoscoped keyframes

Rotoscoped version

After testing various methods of animating this walk cycle, I'm much happier with the appearance at this stage. I think during cleanup some more development will take place. 

I've changed the character design slightly to include boots, as this reflects the reference footage I recorded. When trying to draw the ballet pumps on the character, it kept coming across as though the character was walking on their tiptoes. I will need more experience animating walk cycles and foot movement to better understand how to animate flat shoes. Due to my time constraints, I simply chose to change the character's outfit. In future, I would like to have the flexibility in my drawing ability to animate any type of shoes.