A stick figure animated the way an animator learns to: draw the key poses, set the timing, fill in the frames between, then polish. Each frame is checked for sliding feet, overstretched legs and feet sinking into the floor.
Frame 01/ 24Contact · left heel strikes
Drawing aids
Exposure sheet4 key pose
The four passes
An animator works in passes, from rough to finished. Switch between them to see what each one adds.
Key poses
Four drawings define each step. Tap one to jump to it.
Frame checks
Measured over all 24 frames of the current pass.
Curves
The graph editor view. Dotted lines mark the key poses; the bar is the current frame.
Left side (near)Right side (far)
What a walk is made of
A walk is a controlled fall. Each step the body tips forward and the front leg catches it.
Four key poses per step: contact, down, passing, up. The body is lowest just after contact and highest as the back foot pushes off.
A planted foot never slides. It rolls from heel to flat to ball to toe while the body passes over it.
The swinging foot passes the standing foot at the passing pose, with the knee folded to about 60° so the toes clear the floor.
Arms swing opposite the legs. The forearm and hand trail the upper arm by a couple of frames, which keeps the swing loose.
Timing sets the mood. 12 frames a step at 24 fps is 120 steps a minute, a relaxed 1.4 m/s stroll for this 1.78 m figure.
Review log
Hips too low mid-step. The standing knee bent 26–33° at passing; real walkers bend about 10–20°. Raised the passing and up poses by about 1.5 cm.
Front leg overstretched. For two frames before contact the leg needed to be 1.4 cm longer than it is. Moved the heel strike 6 cm closer to the body and dropped the hips sooner.
Late swing. At the passing pose the swinging foot was still 17 cm behind the standing foot, and the knee only folded 51°. Added a passing key for the foot; the knee now peaks at 60°.
Hitch in the swing. The new passing key’s automatic tangent made the foot slow down at passing, then speed up again. Set the slope by hand, so the foot now speeds up once and slows down once.
Twist bent the knees. The polish pass twists the hips, which lets the legs reach further, so the knees bent more than needed at contact. Lifted the hips 0.8 cm when the twist is widest, the same trick real walkers use to flatten their bounce.
Body hung at contact. In the curves, hip height went flat for two frames at contact before sinking into the down pose. Moved the high point a frame earlier so the body falls into each step in one motion.
Arms reached too high. In the filmstrip the forward forearm rose to 55° from vertical and read as reaching for something. Cut the forward swing to about 47°.
Where this went next
This rig grew into a full animated webtoon: ten minutes, 83 drawn panels, talking characters, fights and city scenery, all drawn in code in a black-and-white action-manga style. The walking scenes still use the walk cycle from this page.