Project 3: Walk Cycle and Looping Background

Create a walk cycle and scrolling background... yup... Due Monday, October 23.

We'll also look at advanced students in-progress work on Monday, October 23.

Ye Olde Walk from Richard Williams' useful classic, The Animator's Survival Kit

How to loop your background in After Effects...

1. Export your walk loop from Animate: File > Export > Export Movie > png sequence. Make sure you choose Colors: 32 bit  in order to use transparency. Make sure you save your sequence to an easy to access folder!
2. In After Effects, import the walk loop. File > Import > File... Make sure to select only the first image in the sequence! If there is a box that says "Import as image sequence", check it! If not, don't worry about it.
3. After Effects won't loop the animation by default, so right click on the animation in the Project window before you add it to the Composition Timeline and choose Interpret Footage > Main... In the dialogue that opens, set Loop to a number high enough to get the job done!
4. If you made your background in Animate, choose File > Export > Export Image and export it as a .png. If you made it in Photoshop, just save a copy as a png. Heck, you can also just import the .psd file if you want to get real crazy.
5. In After Effects, choose File > Import and import your background.
6. Drag your background from the Project tab to the Composition Timeline.
7. Select the background in the timeline and hit "P" for position.
8. Click the Stopwatch icon next to the Position label that opens under your background layer.
9. Now set the beginning and endpoints for your bg - they should adjust automatically.

Miles demo's the basics of creating a walk cycle:

And creating a scrolling background:
More cycles from SOU alum, Jill Bruhn!

Sneaky Guy Cycle from Jill AB on Vimeo.

and. . .


Running Man with Cat from Jill AB on Vimeo.

Richard Williams' Run Cycle