Animated Skycat: Better Walk Cycles and extras

Three more Walk Cycles were done the past few days. Here is what I found:
It seems to be easier to animate through the "straight forward + pose to pose" method suggested by Richard Williams in his book The Animator's Survival Kit. It's much more easy to keep the flow of actions, that resulting in better animations, not so robotic, plain or dull. The sack animation is the best example, walk cycle 6 and 7 were done thinking about that too.

Walk Cycle 5 -

Something like a march, focusing in altering the passing position.

-line is too dirty

-the head dances all over the place (same with ears)

-Nice push on the hips

-Head looks fixed to it's body = no weight. Since it moves at the same time and points to same direction as torso's movement, it looks like if there was no neck at all.

-there is a tiny delay when he throws his foot to the ground (step) --> try to make the foot rotation faster (right now is too much ancle)

Walk Cycle 6

A sad walk Cycle, trying to look for the possibilities on acting. I tryied to portray the sad body, tired feet, a head that is left to its weight, and slow moving arms. In the end, nor the arms or the head were done correctly...

-I like the sad like delay on the step

-arms do almost no arc : they look stiff

-head movement is not well done, head should follow after, not during nor before torsos' movement.

-perhaps HOLDING HIS HEIGHT AND THEN LETTING HIM GO DOWN QUICKLY COULD PORTRAY SADNESS IN A BETTER WAY:

-head bounces more

-body looks weaker

-arms do a small "boing"

Walk Cycle 7

I decided to do this Standard walk to try out some things:

To build the animation "by parts", that is, focus on just one thing at a time, and then go through the frames over and over. First I solved the head and body, then right leg, then left leg, and then the arms. Worked out quite well. Perfect to be combined with straight forward+pose to pose.

I also gave special care to how I drew the lines, not in such a loose manner this time.

-there is arc on arms!

-head bounces right after the down - gives some weight to it

-try to bend arms a little bit more just when they reach maximum height (down) and delay

-there is a frame from down to passing position, in which his foot gives the impression of hitting the floor. - KEEP FOOT ARC IN MIND!

The TINY SACK DOING A TINY JUMP AND STUFF

This one was born to try out some ideas regarding poses and filling the drawings between them by straight-ahead methors. That gave the animation a lot of flow. Also made me think about the different arcs of movement that have to do with each of the character's masses / details.