Need help with walk cycle, don't know what is wrong with it

Shrike

Hey guys,
So we are working on this walk cycle and something seems wierd but character animation is my achilles heel
and I really need some help spotting the error(s). For the first iteration I was able to picture some problems
that we could improve but still something looks off


Top gif shows the single frames, bottom the run how it would look in the end



Would be really thankful for any help!

Cay

Not a world class animator here but I do instantly spot something.
Nobody lifts his feet that high while walking, would consume way too much energy that way.
That's why eventually you do trip over stuff in everyday life.
And he has a lot of distance between his legs.
But in any case I'd suggest looking at some real life reference and you should be able to spot it.

Reminds me of Boston Dynamics and Atlas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IX34pGj-xg

Biomag

As Cay pointed out the feet should have a slight movement to the center when you look at them frontal. The one touching the ground should be closer to the balance point in the center, while the lifted one should reach it furthest point from the center during the passing pose (its more obious for women, but man do it too). This way we get the little extra space to pass by. Reduce also the left-right shifting for the hips if it is suposed to be a regular human. It looks quite extreme.

I would also suggest not to rise the feet that high as the knee comes up significantly after the passing pose. If you lack room for the foot it might be because the tip should be turned upwards before you reach the impact postion since we normaly touch the ground heel first. I would basically lower the froward foot on the 4th frame, while pointing slightly upwards with the toes.

But that's just my 2 cents. I am not an animator either.

Sixshot

A couple of things jump out immediately, like the fact that his diaper must be pretty full :P

As people have already noted, we don't lift our feet that high if we don't have to, it expends too much energy. Likewise, as has already been noted, the feet need to come in more towards the center line from the front view. Biomag is exactly right, we swing them out slightly to get around our other leg (in conjunction with the side-shift of our weight), and then return closer to the middle to catch ourselves. I would also recommend dragging the toe more. We extend our foot pretty far and then kind of whip it back up to catch our next step.

Which leads me into the other critiques I have:
-A walk is a controlled fall, so you want to think of it as coming into and out of balance. Our leg drives our hips forward so our weight is out over our toes and beyond, which puts us out of balance and we begin to fall. We bring the other leg forward to catch ourselves: lather, rinse, repeat. For example, on frame 6 (in the order you've posted them) the hips (and therefore the weight of the character) are back behind the forward foot even though he's just lifted his back foot! Unless you have some weird/ungodly muscles, that's a recipe for falling backwards, not forwards.

-Lastly, it's hard to tell from the gifs so check yourself before you change anything, but it looks like you don't have much up/down movement of the hips (I'm talking translation, rotation looks pretty good). It's a hard thing to get right, and very easy to overdo but be careful of going too light on it. When that front foot comes down it's suddenly forced to deal with most of your weight, so it's going to give a little, and the hips will drop as they're caught.

Hopefully that gives you some stuff to work on! When in doubt: reference, reference, reference!

Shrike

Thanks guys, that certainly helps a lot. I will see what I can do