Animate a Slow, Sad Walk with "Monty"

Animate a sad walk with "Monty"

One thing every animator needs to learn is how to animate a character walk. In our newest tutorial, we show how to take a "plain vanilla" walk using the marvellous "Monty" rig (free for download from Creative Crash) and make Monty sad and depressed - with just a few clicks.  

The video tutorial is recorded in Autodesk Maya, and is aimed at animation beginners. 

About "Monty"

The videos use the marvellous "Monty" rig, free for download, and which you can read about here. 

Start by Animating a Basic Walk with "Monty"

The tutorial takes a basic walk cycle (see this blog post on how to achieve this) and shows how to make very small changes that give the walk character and personality.

Meet "Monty"

Rather than creating a character walk from scratch, a much more efficient approach is to complete a basic walk cycle and then adapt it.  Just a few small changes can make all the difference.   Start your journey by learning how to animate a basic walk cycle. You can find the links below. The password is the same as for all our videos.

Monty Walk Pt 1

https://vimeo.com/830293594

Monty Walk Pt 2

https://vimeo.com/830312251

Monty Walk Pt 3

https://vimeo.com/830337206

Monty Walk Pt 4 

https://vimeo.com/830338058

"Sad Walk" with Monty

To make Monty feel sad, we need to slow down his walk, change his facial expression, and maybe even change his colour. If we change Monty from a pea-green to a faded blue, we can literally give Monty "the blues". (See our video on Colour Theory for Animators to see how to manipulate colour for visual storytelling)

Work Method

1. 

   Animate a "Sad Walk" with the "Monty" rig

   Start by using the scale tool to slow down the walk so that it takes 48 frames instead of 32. Your last  frame will be Frame 49
2. Clean up your keyframes so that they all sit on whole digits. ie frame 17 should be frame 17, not 17.145
3. Adjust Monty's pose so that Monty looks slouchy and sad, facing the ground. 
4. Give Monty a sad expression
5. In the Hypershade, change Monty's colour to blue.
6. Make sure that Monty's feet drag on the ground as he walks.

Sad Walk Tutorial

You can find the Sad Walk Tutorial below:

https://vimeo.com/880610832

Walks and Character Walks

"Journey of Life" by Robin Herrmann

One of the first challenges for junior animators learning their craft is to learn the art of locomotion, specifically how to animate a walk cycle, and later a character or personality walk. What makes a walk happy, or sad? Angry, or fearful? Masculine, or feminine? 

Animators must learn to observe how humans act and move, and be able to replicate that character and personality in their motion. 

Locomotion Resources

There are many free resources on walks (and locomotion generally) at Animation Apprentice. 

Zombie Walk by Michael Davies

Follow the links below to find out more about walks and character walks.

• How to Animate a Basic Walk Cycle with "Heavy"
• Animate a "Double Bounce Walk" with "Monty"
• How to Animate a Basic Walk with "Monty"
• Character Walks with the Bio Motion Walker
• How to Fix a Floaty Walk Cycle
• How to stop feet sliding in a walk cycle
• Why animators need treadmills for walk cycles 
• Why Walk Cycles Need Sine Waves
• Animating the "ZigZag Walk" on "The Thief & The Cobbler" 
• Two Ways to Animate a Walk Cycle - Which is Best?
• Character Walks by Alexander Savchenko
• Why animators should always take two steps
• Character Walk reference by Houman Sorooshnia
• 100 Ways to Walk by Kevin Parry

To find out more about Animation Apprentice, click here for a link to Frequently Asked Questions. To sign up for our next classroom at Animation Apprentice, follow this link.