Learning to walk

To work out a walk cycle for the Dr. Doom character in my animation, I took two series of photographs of myself walking, one side on and one from behind. This was so that I could see the key moments of movement that occur when walking, so that I could translate them into my characters movements. I wore a green hooded coat during these shots, to be as similar to Dooms cloaked hooded figure as possible.




Then I spent a bit of time walking backwards and forwards trying to time how long it took me to take X no of steps over certain distances, and noting at which point during my steps my body dipped or raised, so I could time my characters walk with this to ensure it had a natural rhythm.

I decided to trace over the images of myelf and modify the length of the coat to make it look like a cloak to use them for the actual walk cycle. I wasn't too concerned that it wasn't going to look exactly like Dr. Doom as I was happy for him to be a bit incognito until his identity's revealed at the end. After getting halfway through creating the walkcycle however, I decided to pull the plug on the idea for two reasons. Firstly, I found I actually didn't like the look of the character, and decided I'd be better off using actual images of Doom from the comic books, as the character simply looked too unlike him. Secondly, the walk wasn't working out quite so well. I'd created the body in seperate sections: a main body, an upper and lower arm section for each arm, an upper and lower section for each leg and seperate feet so they could pivot onto the ball of the foot as the leg came up for the stride. Testing the cycle halfway through its creation, I found strange things were happening, one foot was leaping away from the lower leg and reaching its destination before before the rest of the leg, then snapping back onto it, and the right arm was shortening and lenghthening through its swing, making it look pretty weird. So, for these reasons I decided not to waste anymore time on it, and to go back and have a fresh start with a new character graphic. Below is the half completed walk cycle I abandoned.