January Walkthrough: Cat Run Cycle (Patreon)

Obligatory disclaimer I have exactly no formal animation training and am by no means an expert, and this definitely isn't a "correct" process or anything! But this is basically my technique for animating a run cycle for the last couple of years so maybe it will be helpful lol

Warning: there will be lots of GIFs in this post

1. Key poses

I always start by doing really quick gesture sketches of the two main poses in the run cycle. I do the poses where the cat's body is fully extended and where all the legs are gathered under the body, as I consider these the most "extreme" poses to build the rest of the animation off of.

One thing to note here is how flexible the cat's spine is when they're running. If you can nail this movement it definitely helps the rest of the animation come together

2. Refine poses

Next I over the poses from the last step with more detail. It's really important here to make sure your proportions stay consistent!

3. Inbetweens pt 1

Here I added two inbetween sketches (there are 16 frames in total in this animation at 24fps, so this step is animated on 4s because I have 4 different keyframes). Basically just filling in the motion of the cat between the two key poses.

Tips for this step: Try to mix up the spacing of your poses, and don't feel like you have to draw the inbetweens directly in the middle of the movement! In this animation, I drew my inbetweens so the legs are closer to the stretched out pose rather than directly in the middle of the two poses, which I feel helps give weight to the animation. Also, for a run cycle specifically, be sure not to rely too heavily on onion skinning and try to make sure your inbetweens are anatomically correct drawings on their own, this should help the run cycle feel more solid

4. Inbetweens pt 2

Basically the same thing again! I added another inbetween between each frame (this sketch + the finished animation are done on 2s)

5. Cleanup/lines

This is the finicky part lol. For me doing lineart always involves a lot of tweaking to make sure everything stays consistent... there's no real secret to this that I've found, just a lot of rewatching the animation and focusing on different parts to make sure everything flows.

Tips for this step:

• Personally, I like doing lines for individual body parts though the entire cycle one at a time rather than lining each frame all at once. It feels easier to keep track of details that way!
• Pay attention to the cat's fur, especially how many fluffy points there are. Keeping the number of fur fluff consistent can really solidify the animation
• It can be really tempting to copy and paste the head for each frame but I'd recommend not doing this! I traced it a bit from frame to frame to keep things consistent in this animation, but copying and pasting the lineart exactly can make it feel stiff, especially if you have a looser lineart style like I do
• Arcs!!!! Trace the path of different parts of the character and make sure they move in smooth lines. This is super helpful in making your animation fluid as well as spacing your frames

6. Color

Pretty straightforward, your process for this will probably depend on your art program. And that's about it!

Studying refs is really helpful for getting the motion right. Here are some I find useful: (X X X)

One last important thing to pay attention to is that all four paws touch the ground at different times, like this:

That's about it tbh! Run cycles can feel kind of different than "normal animation" and the main thing is paying a lot of attention to consistency and making sure everything loops smoothly. I've also attached the CLIP file for this animation if any CSP users want to check it out!