Original subtitles

- With the layered approach,

we focus on building the motion channel by channel

The idea is not to go through a blocking stage

then detailed blocking, spinning, and polishing.

We will directly work

in the graph editor on specific parts of the character.

We will start from the root of the character

and in reaction, we will animate the legs.

This is the whole concept about the layered approach.

We will first work on the up and down motion

of the root of the torso and in reaction the legs

and then the left to right motion of the torso.

With the file opened and the King set selected,

I've duplicated the action

and then will rename it: walk.

Will activate the fix user

to make sure we don't lose what we are doing

and activate the auto key framing.

First controller will walk with is the tussle route.

As for this scleral character,

it's the main controller of the torso.

So we start with selecting the property's bone

and set to zero, the follow arm properties.

This might be something we will change along the way,

reset it to one or to zero, depending on our needs.

First motion we will work on

is the up and down motion of the torso.

And we will work on the Z location channel.

The goal is to focus on one channel at a time.

So selecting the visibility bone, I will hide everything

but the torso so that we can really focus

on the motion of the torso.

For this animation

I will work with a frame rate of 30 frame per seconds.

You can stick to the 24 frame per second rhythm,

if you want.

It's a matter of personal preferences.

So normally like to work at 30 frames per second

because I'm used to animate for games.

And a lot of movies are now set to 25

to 30 frame per seconds.

But we will cycle range of 30 frame,

in the end I've used a 36 frame

cycle for the up and down motion,

but you can choose to do it faster or slower.

Here I want to create a very slow pace and heavy walk cycle.

But you could do a run cycle with the same method.

With my roots torso selected,

I will directly jump into the graph editor.

The controller is aligned with world space

so we can work directly on the Z location.

I have an up and down motion

for both the left step and the right step.

So on the one whole work cycle,

the up and down motion will repeat twice.

I will arbitrary go to

frame five and raise about here.

The idea here is just to get

an extra key frame on our torso.

The motion will be pretty simple.

If we want to make our character heavy,

we need to make it raise pretty slowly

because it has to push a lot of weight

and whenever the torso is getting down

it will kind of fall pretty fast.

And we can build a pretty strong overshoot to

communicate this weight.

And as I said, tall

I've inputted a very slight up-and-down motion

on the few frame to create some kind of vibration

or bones of the whole torso as if the body was bouncing as

it touched its lowest position.

This will bring a pretty clunky or robotic motion.

I will keep on showing the Z location curve

so that you have a reference.

As any animation process,

it's a creative process,

so I wasn't planning on doing this on 36 frame at first.

To be perfectly honest, I wasn't knowing all

mini frame would take an up-and-down motion.

It's just about playing the animation, making sounds

with my mouse to feel the weight of the character.

And in the end, a little more than one second per step

looks slow enough to communicate the weight

of the robot character.

A couples of details regarding the curve shape.

At first, the character is raising pretty fast

and when it's reaching its top position

it's slightly slowing down.

Then we have some kind of plateau shape on the curve.

This will make the robot hold a bit in the up position

for a few frames, and it will kind of serve

as an anticipation before the fall.

Note that the curve is not perfectly flat here.

I've slightly rotated the handle,

so that even if you took still, it's still moving a bit.

This is a moving hold.

If you have a perfectly flat curve here

it won't look natural.

As your character will stop moving.

Here is my up and down motion of the torso root.

In the next video, we will add the foot motion.