Started off with a couple quick thumbnails to illustrate the basic mood I wanted to capture in the posing. You can see how the idea was really rough with the thumbnail at the far left, and how I took time to tighten up the pose with the subsequent thumbnails. Also, it's a good idea to draw the pose from profile so that the angle of the character's body is being taken into account.
With my idea fleshed out in thumbnail form I start right in with the blocking. I approach my animation in a very systematic way, first blocking in the Keys, then moving on to Extremes, then Breakdowns. I keep my Tangents set to "Clamped" and "Stepped" while I'm blocking so that I don't get distracted by any fluid movement. All of the attention should be on the poses and their relationship to one another. Once I'm satisfied with my blocking, I change the Tangent settings and my curves in the Graph Editor to "Linear" (I've always gone straight to Spline in the past, but I'm trying something new this time).
So now everything is Linear, with offsets added only to the hands and head (The overlap of the head is bugging me. I need to work on that).
The feet always require the most attention in a walk cycle. The part of the cycle that I think is the most crucial to get right is the push-off from the toe when the foot is extended at the back of the stride. I try to get this working first before touching anything else.
I'll continue working on this cycle because I really like how it's looking so far and I'll update the Work In Progress as I go. I hope that somewhere, somebody is reading this and finding it useful.
~Chris
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