Walk Cycle

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In animation, a walk cycle is a sequence of frames representing a (usally human) walk movement. Walk cycles are important, because when a walking person appears in an animation, the walk cycle simply can be looped over and over, without having to animate each step again.

Creating a walk cycle

There exist many techniques to create walk cycles, for example in pixel art and 3D computer graphics. Usually different poses are modelled in a 3D modeller, or hand drawn, and frames in between are then interpolated. Literature most often identifies two opposite poses as the most important, soemtimes called passing point, and high point. The former is the point of a walk where one leg passes past the other, the latter is the point just between two occurences of the passing point, where the body reaches its highest point.

Sometimes more poses are added, like a contact point and recoil point. (For example in [Walkcycle tutorial] from http://www.idleworm.com).

Besides the apparent move of the legs, many more details are necessary for a convincing walk cycle, like arms, head and torsion of the whole body.

There are different types of walk cycles, for example for a slow striding walk, for walking up a staircase, or for running. Walk cycles also differ for the type of person to be animated, like adults/children or male/female.

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