I tried animating a walk cycle 😐 

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I was so scared the trees on the side view walk cycle were going to keep going the wrong way😄

Welcome to animation hell. Where watching our characters come to life is the drug that keeps you working on frame after frame after frame after frame after frame after frame after......

Animation is no easy feat… 🥲 proud of you for giving it a go though! Sorry for not being as consistent with your uploads…. I swear I’m not dead and that I still love all your woooork!!! 😭

As someone who took animation classes in an art school, you doing that without all the extra tips and help of a professional/teacher literally looking over you shoulder is impressive. That looks so good for a first go. I think the walk cycle I did in that class was a literal stick figure with box hips/shoulders and I got fancy and did heels??? Anyway, you full ANINMATED that. SICK stuff!

3D animator here... Honestly, I'm always in awe of anyone who does hand-drawn, frame-by-frame 2D animation. It's absolutely a dying art and something I know I would fail MISERABLY at. Not only that, but the ambition! Your first walk cycle had a complex costume, and included SO much tertiary animation in the sword, hair AND cloak... I'm giving you a standing ovation right now.

“Brisk pace my dear” killed me 😭😭😭

Using ur art block to practice animation is absolutely GINIOUS

3:56 hey so here is a tip from someone who is in animation school, when your doing a front walk cycle the pelvis and the shoulders should actually be going in opposite directions, that’s how our body balances itself. If the shoulders are angling to the left then the hips need to be angling to the right and vice versa. This video by lemoncholy is really good for front walk cycles, paralaxing backgrounds and animation in general: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xFINRxxclyM.htmlsi=zgSgBpQqIQm59pFI

as an animation student you did really good for your first walk cycle!!!! walk cycles are one of the hardest things to animate so congrats!!!!!!! :D

Girl STOP!! I am a producer for a small animation studio and run our workshop/internship programs and this is better than like 75% of the work I see from actual animation students. The key here that sets you apart is you already have such a strong eye for design and anatomy. So many young artists refuse to see the importance of having a good foundation and then they get frustrated when they can't animate even a simple walk cycle. Was this animation perfect? Like you said, no it is not and would likely get sent through another hundred runs of revisions. But that's normal and this animation is AWESOME. Also we feature different artists in a weekly Q&A so if you are ever interested in being a special guest I'd love to have you on!!

I think my favorite part of this youtube channel is how much it displays the saying 'when there's no wind in your sails you have to row'. Even when you're in an artistic rut there's always some way in which you can further your craft or explore new mediums, and I think that's sick as hell

girl, I would die doing 32 drawing of the same character. props to you for surviving 😭

hI, so, im an animator whos just literally last month finished art school, currently trying to broaden my software knowledge whilst searching for work in the industry. if you ever wanna give animation a shot again, and fancy having chaotic company, feel free to give a silly little animator from across the pond a dm lol, same goes to anyone in the comments section

As a graduate of a bachelor's and honours in animation, I'm sincerely impressed by what you've done so far. You've taken on such a tough task of those two walk cycles in a short amount of time (even MY CLASSMATES AND I didn't have a front-facing walk cycle in our assignments or homework!), and you made it visually *pleasing!* I'd have thoughts about some of the follow-through and secondary movements, but I also struggle with that too in animation. I think it's why so many of us (including myself) default to making and wanting to make storyboards and animatics in recent times: less to draw, but still enough story to tell. All in all, keep it up! You're a champ for animating a lady knight in full armour and a sword as your first walk cycles, and I'm definitely gonna share this around with my other graduate buddies. Congrats on your first piece of work! As for how we continue doing this for a living and for fun? Don't worry. We cry over it too. You're not alone.

As early as 3:17 I paused and consulted the animator's survival kit because I noticed lines defining the shoulders and hips that moved parallel to each other when they should oppose each other

As a crazy self taught animator since 6 years ago, this pushed my buttons and made me squirm and get up and pace around the house analyzing my movement comparing it to the animation, going on an imaginary lecture on how to improve the animation from the rough start, before making a beautiful render. but my god thank you for videos Kira you’re amazing

You are SO ambitious and I love you for it THE ENDING ANIMATION LOOKS AMAZING THOUGH (You and your art are such an inspiration to me)

Glad to know I’m not the only one baffled by CSP’s animation interface.

Loved seeing you tackle this! Super cool to see. This was a brave one!

The fact you were able to do this without training is amazing 👏

As a 3rd year animation student. 1 hella impressed, it looks so good!!! 2 you made me cackle so freakin hard this whole video with the animation pain jokes, cause AUGH relatable. Last semester I had a project with a two character dialogue scene with,,,,,150 frames…. 3 oh my god girl you did that in a clip studio- the wince I did when I saw that. the pain of having to deal w that and the beast that is animating itself props to you man 🫡 absolutely love all of your content, love that your try everything and put your all into it, always super inspiring (I may or may not watch your stuff while animating myself so this was super cool :3 )

Animator over here, your depiction of a caffeinated animator is on point xD

Ah, a new tribute to my religion: ✨Ladies with Swords✨

i graduated in animation and wow!!!! You did really good! I am impressed

I love seeing someone who never went to art school try animating because it makes me feel like I too can accomplish my dreams of animating music videos to my favorite songs from middle school. Also, the editing in this one was especially hilarious, you popped off

Seeking you give us animators visibility was so rewarding after spending all morning today painting no less than 45 frames for my storyboard characters (I wanted to give it a professional look, so all of the frames have gone through lineart, coloring by values and lights (help me)). Anyway, I just submitted the whole thing this afternoon and now I am done with my first year of animation school !! Its so fun and seeing u get introduced to it reminds me of how excited I was when I started :)

as someone who has dabbled in animation, the detail level is incredible!! (ps i see you watching jeffiot hehe, love that man)

So cool to see what you were able to accomplish in such a short time! I love the style. I would like to share something I learned while animating, if it does not resonate with you just ignore it, you are doing great and everyones process is different. I think that especially in animation it is good to remember that less is more, the eye can’t really focus if there is too many things happening at once. As an example: you have so many secondary actions that are also overlapping, maybe just picking one of them would be more visually appealing, for example just the cape or just the sword or just the hair. It would make things a bit easier on yourself, since you can focus one the one movement and could even make for better practice since it makes it easier to see what is isn’t working. If you do want to do multiple secondary/overlapping actions, I recommend choosing the one that is most important and getting that to a point where it is working first. Then you can see where there is room to plan the rest of movement in such a way that the don’t intersect as much. Also, yes having a predetermined arc you want a movement to follow can be a life saver! Timing and spacing is a real mindbender sometimes and I still get it wrong a lot. Also also, there is so many things to learn, but you won’t learn unless you actually enjoy at least part of what you are doing, so you should pick what and how you want to learn ❤

Literally made a walk cycle based off of the reference you used (the sideview one) a few days ago as a video game sprite! I honestly just followed the reference pretty closely but was amused when it turned out to be such an excited walk, lol. Anyways I commend you for putting in all that work, animation is a BEAST but it's also really cool.

As someone who is currently in school for animation, this is super ambitious as a beginner animator and I commend you for that! Walk cycles are really hard because character in your animation depends so heavily on the timing of each keypose, which can be really hard to wrap your head around at first. And animation is something that's really hard to learn on your own because it doesn't work the way you think it would intuitively! But this looks great! WAY better than my first walk cycle, lol. Great job!

This is so unbelievably cool, it turned out so good!

Kira is slowly taking over every kind of art and I am so beyond here for it

I would not have the patience to animate like this, it's seriously impressive and you did amazing!! 🥰

This looks amazing! I’m currently studying animation myself trying to nail a walk cycle like this 😭. I recognised a lot of the references in this video that I I used from my own research too lol.

idk why but seeing the final result made me kind of emotional. seeing artists learn 2d animation is a beautiful thing to me. well done

It's different doing that, it's just like making a movie.

I need Kira’s guide to DaVinci Resolve for animation, because those little clips made so much sense and are so cool

Perfect timing! I was just thinking about watching one of your videos.❤

it ended up feeling like a twitch loading screen, i love it!!

Don’t feel too bad about the convolution… my webtoon process is likewise convoluted… *cough 5 softwares cough* nonetheless you continue to amuse and amaze! 🤩 also YES a breakdown of your video process would be fantastic!!

Stopping 11 seconds into the video to say that you do in fact look stunning. Your style in this video is so GOOD! (you always look nice but I just really like this look) 😊

You're super talented and super awesome. And you do this on your own. I hope one day you can just say..."I'm awesome. That's it. That's the commentary." Lol. Love your videos.

👍 I am trying animation but I have been giving it a long break but I might start tomorrow but amazing

Hi! 2D Animator here, dipping head first into a walk cycle without prior animation knowledge is definitely no easy feat and kind of a canon event for most illustrators-turned animators, you did an amazing job all things considered and the art style is gorgeous, you may want to consider using after effects for compositing your animations since you could've done all of what you did in Davinci with a lot of automation and in no more than 10 minutes! If you want to learn more about animation I highly recommend you to check out the 12 principles of animation and study them before jumping into your next character to avoid going through so much pain lol

I'm glad I still find people passionate about their 2D animation and keeping this golden art form alive even in this era of AI and 3D. Keep up the good work.

Obviously a great animation for someone who hasnt animated before, i probably could never, but i think that she’s technically holding her sword different in the front and side walks. Also so glad you fixed the trees that were moving the wrong way before

im so glad you fixed the parallaxing I was worried you wouldn't notice it was backwards. Your art is amazing

It's so beautiful! You did awesome!! I agree-- having to draw something over and over again is so tedious.

Thank you for showing off all the many MANY issues big and small that an animator must address to get to their finished product! This is tremendously helpful as a reality check for anyone who thinks animation ISN'T hard - seeing the full process from behind the scenes is suuuuch a good antidote for the Dunning-Krueger effect XD I now know even better than I did before that I am nooooot cut out for animation, waaaay too much work, huge props to those who can manage it...

A: That's amazing! I admire your resolve to have an overly ambitious idea and just brute force your way into making it happen. B: You jumped straight to hard mode, dear god that is not beginner stuff. Beginner stuff is just getting the timing and movement of a stick figure or a gesture drawing to feel natural. Or to just understand the motions of the walk, which is why the reference for the side walk is so exaggerated.

Hi! I know I'm not even close to being a professional animator but I thought I might share some tips to help make your animation flow more naturally: One really useful tip I've picked up from other animators is staggering the timings of certain parts of the body (idk if I'm using the right words) so it gives certain objects weight. For example, the shoulders and arms usually go down slightly after the torso does, especially for a character in full armor. Same with the head, hands, knees, hair, and cape, leading into the next tip which is holding certain frames for longer. To make the walk cycle feel like it has more weight, you can make the frames where she has both feet on the ground and also when she is at the walk cycle's "highest point" with more frames in between to give the illusion that she's really leading up to her next step. This will make it so that the character's steps have more impact and feel stronger. I'm sure there are tons of videos that explain these concepts better than I just did but I hope this was at least a little bit helpful :)

I love the bouncy walk XD

I love seeing people who don’t do animation professionally try animation and you really respected the process! I love this! (I’m a 2d animator and have a passion for this stuff lol).

i used that same ref for my first side walk cycle!! i haven't done another one since 😅 but i did find it helpful

Wow, that looks like a lot of work.

it gorgeous!!! the way she walks in the front view kinda reminds me of Vi from arcane

Cool animation! I'd love to see how you do your animatics

It looks so good! Animation is so hard, I have so much respect for animators.

I’ve always loved animation, and watched all the bonus features on old Disney movies because it fascinated me, despite not ever doing it myself! So yes!! I would love to please see more of your animation journey to come! ❤

I would in fact love to see a break down of your animatics and how you go through that! I've always wanted to try to start animatics but idk where to start.

This gave me the feeling I got when I first modded skyrim and made my character walk fancy and cool in 3rd person years ago and make it work with my other 300 mods, but like from watching.

as someone who works with animation rn I can definitely confirm to you: we made a deal w the devil. the reward is coffee, back pains and stress good luck in your journey!!!

girl your subtle sarcasm throughout this video was HILARIOUS idk why it seems different from your regular videos but whatever your process was you gotta repeat that i love it. maybe the jokes you make when explaining what you’re doing while doing it is different?? idk man.

I wonder how many Prickly Alpaca videos don't feature hot glue? Honestly love the animation though. Can't wait to see the over the top OC worlds like the fruit vampires.

Firstly just wanted to say I love your art style and colour choices! I'm a 3D animator, but I learnt 2D and traditional in college, and you did great for your first cycle! It's really crazy that you did a fully rendered one too! Animation is definitely not for the weak haha 😅 I hope you try some more! Subscribed!

I've been hoping that you might decide to flesh out some of your "Art with Lore" into full stories in some form. Even if you never decide to do that getting to see one of those characters animated and animated so well at that is amazing and wonderful.

the coloring style is soooo gooooddddd makes them so cutie

It looks AMAZING, especially for your first walk cycle! Keep up the good work 😁😁

This is great! I've started animation so many times and never finished lol now I wanna go work on them, thanks

it looks amazing!!! as someone who did little animations for one singular semester you did a wonderful job!!

Omg it looks amazing!! You did such an amazing job on it for your first time. Well done!

I'm very impressed with your animation. I'd love to see more as well as your own technique for you channel animations

More animation content would be awesome! Kudos on the hard work

it turned out so awesome!!! good job

that's A LOT of work, well done !!

we totally need this to be a series

Late to the party, but always cool to see you trying new things! Animation is such an incredible medium of visual art and takes so much effort and expertise; awesome to see you dive into it!

My absolute props to you, I did a full year of Illustration and Animation at Uni. We dedicate A WHOLE SEMESTER to developing a character and animating a walk cycle. My character was a bit similar to yours, she dragged a great big axe behind her as she stomped through her scene. I found the best way to animate overlapping action (hair and clothes) is to animate it with a combination straight ahead and pose-to-pose approach, have the key frame positions decided but allow a more organic process for the tweens by using straight ahead, it looks a little more natural and easing the frames by making some of them longer and some of them shorter really help had personality to the walk. All these things come with time, like I said took me a whole semester with professionals proving me feedback to get halfway decent, your animation is amazing and I'm sure you'll improve quickly with practice!

respectfully: I love you! As in I love your vibe and artstyle - kinda way 👏

Your thumbnails always look stunning!!!

It looks really good! If you ever are wanting to try something like this again I can recommend timing and spacing for your frames, learning timing charts helped me the most in my classes

Need more video editing Kira!! She’s such a BOSS!!

Stunning and soooo impressive!! 💖💖

okay i dont know much about animation but this is crazy impressive for a first walk cycle!!

That came out really good Kira! Nicely done.☺️👍🏻💖💕

As an 2D animation student at 13:11 was a bit too real. Animation is such a pain but seeing our drawings and ideas brought into life, makes the pain worth it… But not the working conditions most animators still are on top of it all. And you’re smart to think you’re not cut out to be a full time animator after a walking cycle, I didn’t realize till I completed my studies and got into an hospital.

this turned out so good! :)

That was really good for a first time! It was an interesting watch for sure!

As a beginning animator myself you did an amazing job.

As someone who's college level intro animation course that had a walk cycle as our final, this is beautifully done

If you cosplayed her or your spider persona it would be soo cooooool 😭😭

It looks amazing ahhh!!!❤❤

Absolutely great start! I would recommend for next time, you can animate the front and side next to each other, so you can keep head, hips, feet and arms etc consistent on both

I love animation too, but I'm not as good as you, and I took a year of animation and game design for collage. I can make lip sinking and blinking, and other simple movements lol. My RU-vid isn't about animation, I have to find time in between projects and find ways to fit it in the beginning of my tutorials. You did really good. I tried to download Resolve but it didn't take no matter how many times or what I tried. I ended up buying Pinnacle 24 and I love it. Keep going!

aaaah yes so good! and whenever you do more animation (pls take your time) i will be front and center

That looks amazing❤

Glad to know I’m not the only one who tediously edits animations in DaVinci😂

Ooo good timing I was planning on animating something this week

You are soo talented!! 👏👏🤯🤯 I could not do this!!