I am not a fan of walks “on the spot” and in games I never had to make one but Kyle Balda’s workflow seems really effective. No step blocking here, he starts immediately in spline, which technique I am finding, a lot of very fast feature animator tend to favor. Rob Thompson gave us a similar demo at the Animation Collaborative and Rob was originally a 2d animator.

In the following video, Kyle Balda creates a basic walk cycle in 30 minutes! It is good to see how he handles the peel of the heel and the math expressions he uses in the graph editor. I didn’t know the ones he applies in the video but one I use extensively to troubleshoot gimbal locks is the +=360 or -=360

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9N_sIBRWvY[/youtube]

Related post:
Weight shift