Now we got to the hardest part of the whole course. You have the corruptor, it is automatable it's full with bones, it can move around. Now if you are making a corrector, which has two legs and walking around, then it's a must that you understand and create a walk cycle. A walk cycle is a simple few frame animation, which is trying to imitate the walk of a corrector. If you remember in the previous lesson, I was showing you references reference videos, those are great, they can help you but you still have to understand it. I read it somewhere that even if you are a seasoned animator, which we are not, even if you are a seasoned animator, you have to understand and draw a proper walk cycle yourself.

And for beginners, it is a must. If you can do that properly, you can do everything. I think the reason is because it's so natural and we are so used to it. The people are walking around that we can see me straight on and people traced see straight on. To understand the work cycle you have to understand that what are the key frames of a good walk. Let's create a new animation and let's call it walk.

So starting from point zero and with my normal stance Ctrl V to see the bones. Okay, I zoom in so I see what I do. Now a walk cycle has four important keyframes. First one is when the characters leg is making contact to the floor the first time. It's great that we have this line here this horizontal line because we can use it as floor when I first position my corrector I positioned it to that so the first one It's cold contact when the leg is reaching the floor, how it looks like I just lift the arm up now so we see the leg. Later on obviously I can also animate the arm that it goes with the movement.

Alright. So, contact is when the leg is just contacting reaching the floor. Take care that the alto King is still on. You see I already have some key set because I'm moving the bones here and the front leg is straight. Your leg is bent. Okay, now because during the contact the phone lag is going forward.

It's called contact position because this is where you are going forward. This is where the character moves. Now in an animation in a walk cycle, if you check the references, it seems that the character is walking in one place. Why is that? Because you will move it in your game, you will add the speed to it your game when the player is pushing the right button, the character will move in four spaces in the right direction. But here in the animation, you have to walk in one place.

That's why it's so heavy to understand because there is no forward movement. But I move the legs and now we see that is not underlined, as it was previously standing on the line. And this is happening because your head is bouncing up and down when you are walking. So what we do now we get at the root bone and use it to position our corruptor. And yes, he's conducting the floor. This was keyframe one I move to the second one is when he is totally down to the ground and he his front leg now is going up.

This is called the down position. So, the first one was the contact, this is called the down position. This is when only one of your leg is on the ground and the other one and the other one is in the air. So all your body weight is on your first leg. You see this is higher than this one. Now again and now you see why it is called the down position.

Again, I have to reposition it. I select the root bone, perfect reposition. So what is happening now is this from here is going to hear nice step again two steps. The next one is the passing. Now this is I think, I usually make the big mistakes. I don't understand it.

A lot of times I have to overthink and watch myself in the mirror or watch references, but it's fine. This is where the two legs are seemingly crossing, because yeah, one is going in front of the other. What is happening that this leg the rear leg, starts from the contact position is where the leg is the front. Yeah, that's the third so it can go then it starts to bend, and here it starts to go totally backwards and straightens up. All the body weight is on this leg and the body move forwards because of this leg. And that's great.

Okay, so no, this leg is going backwards. I just removed the backhand bone. Yes. All right. I didn't remove it I just made it invisible just for now. So this leg goes straight under the corrector and these legs, the feet part, the foot part is straightening up.

So it is holding all the body weight. What is the other leg doing in the meantime is that it will already This is the as far as it can go back and it's already coming back to the front but it's not a big kick. We are moving only the knee. So this one is bending. This one is bending in what we have so far, talk talk talk nice. Now he stayed down so you know what the what is happening and what is coming.

We Going for the root bone and move it up, not rotated, select, get the selection to move it up. This line is so much happening. So let's see what we have so far. Okay, it's so fast we cannot see it. But we will pull it aside and we're going to see it properly. If I put the speed down I can see maybe you see a nice step is starting.

Now I see a mistake, which I didn't see before is that this one is not in position. This image is not in position because I see a break. What I do here is an each frame I just reset it. I just work on this a bit. So I go to the selection Okay, same here. I have to arrange this bone again.

So it has the contact. All right, let's see, no, I put the speed down just for testing. Don't forget it, as I did before, don't forget it. So now we add another keyframe and this is called the peak or the up position. You remember we had the contact position when the legs are totally open, we have a down position when the corrector is down totally on one leg and that leg is bent, and then that leg starts to shoot up. And then there is an even higher position, which is the peak which is the highest it can get.

The forward leg is already going towards the new contact position of the forward leg. We will do this for frames again. And from eight frames. You're going to have a fluent animation for walk. I bend it a bit in the previous Same Okay. Now here as this is the peak position I make it the straightest.

And as it is a peak, I move up, move the corrector up a bit. We check it now. Nice. It's bouncing nicely. Maybe I made it too high. All right.

It's down. Hopper. Pretty much up. Okay, I just want to make it perfect. The effect you want to have is that the leg supporting the body weight from the contact position to going backward. It's seemingly sliding on the floor.

It's not sliding is going under the body as the body is moving over the feet, but it seems that it's sliding backwards, okay? And the front leg starts to come up and extend and I think it can also move a bit. Okay. Now I have four frames. Let's see how it looks. Now what am I gonna do?

I do the same again, but with different legs. I move to frames and I make this time a quanta position but we do read like and we don't like because my characters special with very low, short legs. I can play a bit and hide this edge of the feet. That's why I am moving it around. And this is the straight like this time from the peak we are coming down so the whole collector again thanks to the root bone is working, getting beaten down so it has contact you can check this issue now only take care about the How high is the head of the corruptor you see it has a nice bounce. So that's my contact now.

And now I switch I go again to the down position. I make a new frame and here this leg will bend and this leg will hold all the weight of the corrector this comes up This comes down. This comes up as this one is in the air totally. And yes, you know what is coming position the corrector down a bit. All right. You have this now next in the next room after the down it's coming to passing position so we're gonna move this leg almost straight.

As you see you can see the edge again. So what I do now I reposition this bone again. If you have a different corrector you might don't have to do this but I want to hide these edges of the land. Also on this previous frame, I think I made the mistake of not hiding the edge Okay, fine. So no he's like this and the rear leg is coming closer to the front. This is where they are passing this is why it is the passing position.

Nice. It's coming to the front and this is bending in. As it is bending again, I move it a bit so this edge not gonna be visible. It's a small thing, but I want to have a good animation and I add another frame and now it will be the peak. After the peak, it will go into the contact again. So the peak is when it's the highest this leg is already going Don't beat and shooting for the contact position.

Coming forward, not contact yet but almost. And this leg is the straightest it can be. And it's propelling the corrector up. Now what I didn't do in the previous frame, here, it's fine. Here. I didn't do it as this is the best thing.

Where is my route? Here you are, and it's up. And then this frame it's up to you can even move this one for bit more. Okay, let's see what we have so far. You see a little jump here and why it is because this frame is missing. So I copied here but because of that I don't have to export the last frame of the animation.

It will be perfect now let's see it in the real speed. But I also see a mistake here is that the backlog here, the backlog should be more behind the corruptor. So what I do here I find the backlog a bit more is my daughter correct? From the front foot torso yes the backlog is behind the torso so I'm fine let's see it on here. Same thing again has to be a bit more behind think is the same everywhere. Okay he it's not much visible either no fine can be back a bit so the mistake was that it was too much in the front.

I am not afraid to show you mistakes Why? Because first of all, I'm not hundred percent a professional artist I'm a graphic designer second of all. If you see how I correct mistakes you will not be afraid yourself and will correct your mistakes straight on like I do. not see much better. But here this is nice nice nice Nice. All right again.

This frame I didn't copy this one is okay. And I just copied this frame. I didn't copy this. Let's see again, much better. And you see it has some weight. Don't, don't, don't, don't you can almost hear him walking and that's what you want.

If you made it so far you managed to understand and build half of the walk cycle the legs are done. In the next lesson, we will take it even further.