Animate a Run Cycle

1. Introduction: Hi, of psychosis. And I've been an animator and an illustrator since 2004. And today, I want to show you how to do this. If you don't know my work, check this out. All right. Let's get started. 2. Three main keys: Okay, so we're going to animate a running cycle. And for this we need to start with a character. So I'm going to draw a very simple character to start with. Okay, So this is the character I'm going to animate. So it's a very simple character. I just tourism little dots on the articulations so that we can see them clearly. And I'm going to emphasize one of the sides so that I can see which ones at the front or the back. But this is just the design of the character. So first thing I'm going to do is to draw the first key frame. And in a running cycle, the way I animate, you only really need three keyframes. So I'm going to start by drawing those three key frames. Then because I running cycle is a symmetrical thing you do with 1 third and then the other third. And we're going to duplicate this three frames and put them to do the symetric poses. And then we'll have six keyframes to describe the animation. And then after that we will go get on to do some in-betweens as a drug. So let me show you the first key frame. So for the first key, fine, It's what I call a contact. Fine. We have to contact frames in a running cycles. And the contact phase is the moment when the character is extending at the maximum from, from the floor, pushing on the flow and extending its lag and just before it takes off basically. And then a second contact frame will be character lands with the foot forward. And then we have the third key frame where the character is going to be just down, further down as it can be with both legs crossing. So the first one I want is to the first conduct fine when it's taking off, so it's fully extended. So for this position, the character on that line roughly, and I'm going to make sure it stays on the line. Okay, So this is the first key. I want to emphasize here the fact that I have drawn this part of the body with a thicker line so that I can tell that it's at the front and void the eye being confused with what is at the front and what is at the back. And that's all. So in this particular position, What's interesting to notice is how this part of the body is fully extended. It's really straight. It's like a straight line. You can have a bit of a curve to it. But basically it's the body really pushing forward. The trunk of the body is actually twisted. So as you can see, it's got a shape like this because the shoulder is a twisting in one direction while the hips twisting in the other direction. So this is the most twisted in a way that the body can, because really pushing hard to throw that arm forward and pushing with that leg at the back. Okay. So from that point on, you can see I drew this foot just touching the floor, right? This is the moment when the key is going to, cat has been leave the floor. On those first three frames, we're not going to actually see the character off the floor because the next keyframe is going to be landing on the floor. So it's going to be this leg touching the floor of the front while the other leg is bending. So let me draw the next one. Okay, So this is the second key frame, as you can see now it's also contact keyframe because the character is touching the floor and employment. So compared to the one before, it's probably very similar height. So the head would stay pretty much the same position. And then but the hips are moving forward and reaching for the floor, trying to reach the floor in front of it. And now we have this line at first, remember this line there. And I would go a different line of the body is this one is yes. The other leg this time it's very straight, reaching for the flow in front. Now, while the legs are doing this, the arms keep swinging. So the arms were very going forward this way. And now the keep moving, as you can see, the keep moving in the same direction, then they would leave. And then I would like to point out that this leg is actually kept also moving backwards. It come, continues its movement because it's going this way. If you want to compare to the rest of the body. And on the next frame keeps going up like this. Then, now the next frame is going to be the moment when the legs crossed and the arms cross. They don't quite cross exactly when the foot is just underneath. So I'm going to draw the next frame when the foot is perfectly underneath the character. For the legs are not quite crossing exactly at that time. And I'll show you that. It's also the moment when the character is really the body goes down. Before it's charging up energy, it's going down and the legs are bent. It's charging up energy to push forward again with the very first keyframe. So now we need to do a third key frame. So as you can see, I'm drawing the head first and I'm taking it down a little bit for the up-and-down movement. Okay, So this is the new key frame. You can see that even though the foot is going right underneath the character, we're not quite crossing the arms and legs yet, but the arms are starting to go down and the back leg is starting to move forward. The reason that is is because it's really between this key frame and the next one and the management and the energy goes into, so it goes really quickly from Mackey frame to the next one extends fully, right? So, and that's it. That's the three key frames we want. You'll notice that bend their body a little bit here. So between that position and that position, the whole body, so bending down. Okay. 3. Symmetrical keys: And then from then on, we're going to move to a similar post, this one except this time, instead of being the left leg, that's how the France can be. The right leg is at the front, right. So I'm just going to basically reuse that drawing. I'm going to duplicate and draw and simply the other side of the body in front. And I'm going to do the exact same thing for the other frames as well. So I'm gonna do all those three frames. Three frames, I'm going to redraw them, but a thick line will be the other spout body, the other side. Okay. That's the first frame I inverted. So this is how it was first. This is our a is now you see same position to swapping the back and the front. Okay, That's the second frame now for the last one. And that's it. I've got all my six key frames. So let's play this through and see what it looks like. So there we go. It's quite dynamic run. This is actually playing at 12 frames per second, and we have six frames. Or you could also play this at 24 frames per second. But each frame needs to be double. 4. Inbetweens: What I want to do now is to add some in-betweens. What I wanna do exactly is add one in-between, between each frame. So I'm just going to double the amount of frames. And each frame will have, you know, something special about it. But this is still, an animation is symmetrical. So or I need to do is draw half of the in-betweens and I can just duplicate them and redraw on top for the other in-betweens. So I've already got added some empty lines between each frame. So it looks like this right now. So I'm going to use my onion skin on his program to draw in between two frames. So here I am sitting between the first contact, fine I mentioned, and the next contact frame. So this is the moment, the only moment when the body is actually completely off the floor when now the first is touching the floor. So the forward leg is extending towards the flow and the back leg is just left the flow and the whole body is moving up slightly. So this is going to be the moment when the body is further up as it can be. Okay, so I'm going to start by redrawing the head and the shoulders and move everything out of it. Okay, So as you can see, I'm drawing these lines exactly in the middle. And I'm going to take this and just move it up a little bit. This mixture should. Now I'm going to draw the rest. I'm going to draw the arms swinging the legs. At this point, the arms are going into position and it's slowing down. So to be more specific here, I would like my drawing to be slightly closer to the green join, which is the second key. So here, this, I'm going to make sure that it's closer to the green line and same as the front. Now for the legs. So here are the same for the back leg. I'm trying to draw this one closer to the green. The green one because this foot is going up like this and slowing down into that green decision before it starts going forward again. And then at the front, however, I'm concerned more with the foot. This foot needs to go from here to here. And I may come, it goes down like this and solve this motion. And this is the membrane just before it touches the floor. So again, I want my life to be slightly closer to the green one. Now we're going to move to the next one, which is here. Between the fully extended contacts frame here and the moment when the body is as low as possible. So again, what I do is I just redraw one of the heads and I just move it down. This time again, I want to discounts to be closer to the top drawing. The drawing when the body's quite high up, why is dies? Because the body is accelerating as it's falling down a little bit. So to be fair, it's not that important. You can draw it right in the middle. I think it would work just as well. I'm going to do the actually for the sake of simplicity. So with regard to the arms, again, the top position was the frame before. It was here, that they almost as high as possible, slight starting to speed up and go down. So I want to keep that frame closer to the previous frame, which is the pink one in this case. So the arm stays closer to our frame. Now for download from the front leg, something interesting happens here. The knee will be delayed a little bit because to allow for the food to move this way. The third being on a flat surface, it pushes the knee up a little bit and stops the knee from going down to that position. So you don't want to draw the knee in the middle here. It's going to be pretty much staying where it was exactly the previous time while the whole body is going down and the foot is moving, that knee is staying where they were at it. As the back of the back leg. One is picking up speed nicely named going to cross soon. So again, I'm going to keep a slightly closer to the pink drawing here. So this is why I've got for this one. Now I need to do one more. And then we'll have three in-betweens, which I will again duplicate and symmetrically. So although the third one now. So this is the important moment when the body is completely change it direction. You can see we have the forward leg. The left leg here is still at the front and then suddenly really quickly goes to the back. And the shoulders are changing directions so the hips are changing and shortest changing. So this is the real moment when your legs are crossing and your shoulders, of course everything is crossing at that fwrite. So because everything is crossing, we sing the whole body perfectly from the side. So the leg, the leg that's pushing it starting to straight. So it's not fully strike yet because that would be the next frame. But it's really starting to push on the body. So on that's closest to us swinging from this position to that one like this. So keep in mind that it's gotta be a noun. So the elbow, as it goes down from here to here, it needs to follow the arc. So I'm gonna put it here maybe. And then the hand somewhere here. And obviously the other arm at the bank is doing the same thing. We want to place it here. Now I need to draw the leg. That's how the backend is going from that position to that position here. Again, the extreme position. Now what will be the extreme position? Where the leg is sort of slowing into it. So I want to be closer to that, slightly closer to that position. Here we go. So these, these are my first drawings with the in-betweens and you can start feeling the movement. You start spin more lateral. Now I need to draw the other ones, the ones I'm missing still. And like I said before, I'm just going to do a symmetrical version of it. So I'm going to quickly go. And here we go. I think we've got all the drawings now. I'm hearing is this little character. So if you think this is getting a bit fast, you could add more in-betweens and slow down the movement. Or simply, this is animated at 24 frames per second. You can take the frame rate down to half or third. That's, that's up to you. So the next thing will be taking the same principles and applying to a new character. 5. Application example: Okay, Now we're going to apply what we've just done two new character. So what I've done here is I've designed, designed this character. It's a little no Kit, Kat, kit. And have kept on the top corner here, the top right. The animation that I've just done, so that I've got this reference I'm going to show you, I'm going to do exactly the same thing just with this new character here. So I'm just going to put it aside and keep those in Shaw, I'm going to start with the first key frame, the one that we go on the top right, right now. So I'm starting by tracing the face because the face is not going to change much. And then I'm going to keep reusing that face. Okay, so I'm quite happy with this key frame. And as you can see, has the same position as our original key frame. So I go back here because the drag of the firm, because the line is quite important all across the body. And the back Alice forward. So I want to keep doing this for each frame. So there's three keyframes. And then again, I'm going to duplicate those and draw the semicircle and poses. And then after we do the in-betweens. So let's get on with the second keyframe. So this time the left leg will be forward and contacting with the flow and the front. Okay, So this is it for a second keyframe. And again, you can see that this line is quite important and I've got the same here. The arms keep swinging up. As an artist and a leg keeps going up as well. So same idea is here. This is kinda where it looks like right now. And so next, I'm going to have to do this one next keyframe when the character is further down. So let's get on with this one. Hi, and made my guide that I created before. Just swapping them cheats. Okay? Okay, So this is this animation. Get a little bit more movement in the face so that there's a little bit more delay just to, just to make it look a little less stiff. Let's get on with it. For these in-betweens, I'm going to use the same principle as before. So I'm going to follow the guide again that I created up there. So I've got all my in-betweens in the guide. And all I wanna do is we use the same ideas, eye movement of feet, saying movement of the ions and to keep all those seeds into it. Okay. Okay, so now I have this first set of in-betweens for the first three keyframes. And you can start seeing the nice movement of his body. And I would like to, like I said, I would like to have a little bit of movement in the head. So what I'm gonna do is basically when it goes up, when he pushes like this, the head will go down a little bit. And when it goes down like this, the head will go up a little bit. That's all it takes. So basically full extension like this, the head open down because what is pushing the face is going down a little bit because of the dynamic of it. And then it will be, and then we'll go up again. And so let me do this. Okay, so here we go. It looks a bit more natural already, right? It's not much stay. And there's one thing I forgot. I'm just going to make it wave like this. Next, what I need to do is to do the remaining in-betweens. So again, I'm just going to duplicate those and make them. So we took some doors the other side. So here it is with only 10 betweens. It's running at 24 frames per second. And it's running exactly like the model at the top. So that's it. I hope you've learned a thing or two, animating a running, run cycle. And I would love to see you doing your own animation. So feel free to share it and I'll be happy to commodify. Can see your post. I'll see you in the next lesson.