Animating with Blender

Walk This Way

If you’ve done preliminary work in animation and followed the beginner tutorials, you’ve no doubt created a walk cycle at some point. For example, characters that will be running for a long distance and not hold the main focus of a shot will no doubt be fine with the traditional walk cycle methods. However, when your main characters need to walk and move around as the central action in a shot, the walk (or run, or leap, or shamble) should be done by hand.

Shot 7 of The Beast, which shows both dogs, the mother, and the baby, has the mother turning around in place, walking to get a better view of the living room, and kneeling to find the Beast. Figure 11.41 shows a frame of the shot.

Figure 11.41. Shot 7 for The Beast

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