Animated Nileya - Catwalk WIP

Nileya’s catwalk animation is going to be my first complete walk cycle animation. Drawing a motion like this (both mechanical and casual) requires a lot of work and understanding of how bodies move, and is evidently something all animators need to learn to do eventually.

I started by figuring out the timing and the spacing of Nileya’s stride. I tried to keep her cool, confident demeanour in mind here as I thought about how Nileya would walk. Watching lots of videos of girls walking in heels was very informative… and fun! Once I made sure the contact points all lined up and that her stride was evenly paced, I put together a quick animation to double check my work.

Walking across the page…

…and walking in place. After all, when this animation is finished, we’re gonna turn it into an animated sticker, so its most important that she looks good walking in place.

Now it’s time to start drawing, beginning with our extremes (the contact frames where the heels touch the ground) and the passing frames (directly in between the contact frames). Before I go any further though, I want to figure out the timing and the spacing for any of Nileya’s features that are on separate runs from her walk. These are her ‘bounce’ features (hair, breasts, earrings), and her ‘swing’ features (the swinging of her arms). I’ll keep these rough for now until it’s time to flesh them out further. For now, I want to focus on a smooth walk.

I like this walk for Nileya because it’s got a lot of motion, a lot of bounce, and a lot of confidence (especially in her arched back and her swinging shoulders). The next step will be to get the spacing right on her bounce and her swing, and then we’re gonna in-between this on 1s… that’s a drawing per frame, which will make for a very smooth animation as long as I do everything right!

There’s still a lot to do, so I’d better get back to it!

I hope you’ll all enjoy this animation when it’s complete 😋