walker
8/3/11 1:51 PM
Walk Cycle
ŠMike Kelly RMU 2011
draw a figure in Illustrator, Flash, or in Photoshop.
17 shapes make up my character. four: legs, three:arms. copied for the back ones. he's posed in mid-stride - called contact.
Page 1 of 7
walker
8/3/11 1:51 PM
in this case, the character was exported as a swf from Illustrator. you can Save as named Layers in Photoshop, or you can convert each shape to a graphic symbol if you create your character in Flash.
Page 2 of 7
walker
8/3/11 1:51 PM
Page 3 of 7
walker
8/3/11 1:51 PM
in Flash:
I chose the Library option because Flash was making duplicates of all the Symbols when I imported to the Stage. in this case, it pulled in two empty symbols also. I trashed
them.
the reason 18 Symbols are left is because it started the load with Symbol 2, and the extra one is the line.
Page 4 of 7
walker
8/3/11 1:51 PM
select all of the Symbols and drag them to the Stage at once.
create a new Layer and Import "walker.png" to Stage on that Layer. here's a link to it. image, courtesy of http://kisstudy1.blogspot.com/
Page 5 of 7
walker
8/3/11 1:51 PM
unlock and slide the template to the left to the next character pose (Down) and lock its Layer again. this will make the character walk in place.
1) select lower arm and hand.
2)move its pivot center up and to the left (elbow).
3)rotate.
Page 6 of 7
walker
8/3/11 1:51 PM
match the leg movement as well. continue down the line of the template making new keyframes every other frame until the last pose. Insert a New Movieclip after copying its frames. paste the frames in the new movieclip called walker. use it to make something like these:
walking in place at 15 fps.
two walkers across the stage. the second one a Duplicate with every frame but the keyframes removed. walker_start.fla is here. click here for a gif that has all of the moves that you can use as a template for the final four leg and arm movements.
Page 7 of 7