How to create an insect/arachnid walk cycle in After Effects

Creating a walk cycle for a creature with more than two legs may seem difficult, but its as simple as making a human walk cycle, with just a few extra steps.

1, Have a creature with 6 or 8 legs

I will be using my spider from my story animation. I know my spider looks like it has only 5 legs but that's because the other 3 legs are behind the rest of the body, so I decided not to show them. It doesn't really matter if it has 6 or 8 legs, because the middle pair of legs will just be able to move on its own. I have highlighted the legs that will eventually be paired together, since arachnids and insects legs move like human legs, but in pairs.

2, Pairing the legs

The legs can be paired together using the whip tool in After Effects. Drag the whip tool from the middle green leg to the front green leg, and the back pink leg to the middle pink leg. Now when you set up your key frames on the first and second legs, all of the other legs will follow.

3, Key frames

The key frames on a walk cycle make the shape of a "D" on its side when looking at the path. Create a key frame where the first leg is moved to the right a bit, then another with the leg moved up and to the left, then another with the leg moved down on the same plane as the first key frame to the left. Copy and paste the first key frame so that  the leg goes back to where it originally was. You now have a full cycle.

4, Copying and pasting key frames

Once you have your key frames for the first set, all you have to do is copy and paste the frames from the first set to the second set, and then move them so that those frames start in the middle of the first frames, so that your legs don't move at the same time. If you make more copies of the frames you can have a longer walk cycle.

5, Watch your walk cycle

Your walk cycle should look similar to mine. Notice that the legs move opposite of each other. I hope this tutorial helped!

Story Animation

Another thing we did recently (before we learned about Maya, actually) was create our first story animation with After Effects. This was, by far, one of the biggest and most stressful things I've done in all of e-Comm so far, other than the big group projects we did last year, but I'm proud that I powered through and proud of my work.

Pre-Production

My storyboard

When our teacher first told us that we would be writing a short story, and then animating it, I had millions of ideas flying through my head. My main thought was that I wanted something cute. I remembered a spider that I had found in my bathroom several days prior, and how I had put them on a piece of paper, under a cup, and let him outside. I thought of what might have been going through the spider's mind, and what they thought when they got outside. I realize that spiders don't raise their offspring, but keeping with the "cute" theme, I thought up a small spider family, made up of a mother and child, living in a human's bathroom.

Production

Storyboarding for this was fun; I love spiders and I love drawing them. I really liked the way my designs looked on paper, but unfortunately my digital art skills aren't as good and they didn't translate well onto the computer. My story, however, was overshot. I set my standards a bit too high for myself and my abilities. I had to shorten and simplify my story once I hit production because of time limitations, which made me a bit upset, but what can I do when it's my first major project in my sophomore year of high school animation.

Trouble with After Effects

Finished baby spider design

Another bit that made creating this so stressful was working with After Effects. After Effects was easy for me to manage when I had a few different layers and such, but once you throw in more than one character, backgrounds with five plus layers, and multiple different scenes, things get troublesome. Once I had finished creating my backgrounds and characters, I needed to figure out a way to put it all together into a story, which was very overwhelming. Eventually, I calmed down and thought it through. The final project did eventually come out and I'm very proud of the work I've done for my first big project in this class.

Post-Production

After almost everyone else in class had finished their animations, we watched and critiqued each other. There were no harmful words towards each other, only what we liked, and thought needed work on our animations. I was told that mine was well done, though there were somethings that I needed to fix, such as some timing issues and objects that didn't fit the aesthetic of the rest of the animation. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get to any of these things since I had deadlines to meet.

Conclusion

I really wish I had set my standards lower for myself. That was probably the main cause of my stress, and the rushing of my project. I'm proud of myself for having overcome my stress and finishing the project, but I'm upset that I almost let the stress get to me. For our next big project I'll probably try to take things easier on myself and try to stay after and work on things at school.