In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to make a walkcycle...without animating a walkcycle. I know that sounds weird but it is possible to make a character look like they're walking without actually making them walk.

 

I'm going to be using Clip Studio Paint EX for this tutorial. If you have Clip Studio Paint Pro, you can still follow this tutorial, but be aware that you'll only be able to go up to 24 frames in that version of the program.

 

If you've never used this program before or if you're not used to the animation side of things, I'm going to go through this step-by-step so feel free to follow along if you'd like to learn how to animate a walkcycle - well, sort of!

 

Here is a link to the video version of this tutorial.

Setting up a file for animation

Open Clip Studio Paint and select File > New. Select the Animation option. This might seem a bit intimidating at first but the only bits you need to pay attention to are the Width x Height and the Frame Rate. I have mine set to 1920 x 1080 as this is the usual Full HD Preview settings for most video sharing sites, and I have the frame rate set to 24 frames per second.

 

Depending on what/how you're animating you can set the frame rate to whatever you like, as long as you export the video with the same frame rate. For this example, I'm keeping it at 24 fps.

 

How To Use Keyframes

When you're in an animation layer, you can enable keyframes by pressing this button. Don't worry if you press the button again and all your frames disappear. Once you have placed your keyframes they won't be deleted and it acts as an on/off button. When your keyframes are turned off, you can edit the object on the layer as you wish.

 

Next to the Add Keyframe button is a button called 'Keyframe interpolation' which will determine how your animation will move. The three options are Hold interoplation (which will show up as a yellow diamond on the timeline), Linear Interoplation (which is the green diamond) and Smooth Interpolation (which is a purple diamond).

 

• Hold Interpolation - To be honest I very rarely use this one but it comes in handy when you want to quickly snap from one pose to another. I also use this in my animations when I want to zoom in without a panning shot. (Add King Crowbeard example)

 

• Linear interoplation - I mainly use this one for when I want a character or object to move in a straight line from one point to another. I find this option works best with a scrolling background or a mechanical oject like a conveyor belt for example.

 

• Smooth interpolation - This is the one I use most of the time as it has a bouncy, 'easing in' effect that makes it look slightly more natural than the other two keyframe options.

 

 

When selecting an object in the keyframe settings, you'll notice that there's a little 'plus' sign in the middle of it. That's the anchor point of your object. That basically means that this is where your object will move from. So if you want your object to spin in a circle, make sure that it's in the middle of your object. If you want it to move from a certain point, say if I wanted the star to fall on it's side, I'd move the plus sign to one on the corners.

 

Scrolling the background

Once you know the basics of how to use the keyframes, it's time to put them into practice. For the first part of the animation, you'll need a background. It's best to have a background that scrolls or at least one that's wider than it is tall. For my example, I copy+ pasted and flipped it horizontally to make it longer. It doesn't loop perfectly but this is just a practice example.

 

Now save this image as a png and import it into your animation workspace. You do this by selecting the animation folder you want the background to go in, click File > Import > Image and select the background and it will appear in the folder. To make it show up on the canvas, right click on the first frame and select the name of your file.

To set up the background, drag the image to the right and make sure the image fits inside the blue square. Think of it like the viewfinder of a camera. Anything outside of the square won't be visible when it's exported so keep that in mind.

 

To add a character, click on the New Animation Folder button and make sure the layer is above the Background folder. Name the folder 'Character' and press the 'New Animation Cel' button. You only need to make one drawing for this effect to work. I'm drawing a very simple character for this example but you can make yours as simple or as complex as you like.

 

 

Now to make the background scroll. Hide your character layer by pressing the eyeball icon in the left hand side of the Character folder. Select the Background folder, click the Enable Keyframes button and select Linear Interpolation. Drag the red bar to the very beginning of the timeline and press the 'Add Keyframe' button. Now drag the red bar to the end of the time line. Click the 'Object' button in the Tool selection window to select the background, hold down the Shift key, and drag the background to the left.

 

Keep in mind that the further you drag the background, the faster the image will scroll when you play it back. This will also depend on how long the image is, so experiment with how far you want the background to scroll to get the right speed for your animation. In this example I dragged the background to about halfway which resulted in a slower scroll.

Animating the 'Walkcycle'

To make the cheater, Hanna-Barbera esque walkcycle, drag the red bar to the beginning of the timeline and check the eyeball icon to make your character visible. As you can see, this has an illusion of movement, but it looks more like they're wearing heelies rather than walking with their own two feet.

 

So to give the character that bouncy walkcycle effect, enable keyframes on the character layer and select Smooth interpolation. You can either add keyframes manually by pressing the Add Keyframes button or they can be added automatically by moving the image on the canvas. In the character folder, add a keyframe to the beginning of the timeline. Then drag the red bar to frame 5, select 'Object' in the toolbar and drag the character up slightly. As you can see, this automatically added a keyframe when the keyframe option is enabled. Drag the red bar to frame 9 and then drag the character down, just below the position they're at on the first frame.

Now instead of repeating that process manually, there's an easy trick you can do to make the movement more uniform. Hold down the left mouse button and drag over the keyframes so they're highlighted. Right click the first keyframe on the timeline and select Copy. Then go to frame 12 and right click 'Paste'. This will copy the keyframes at their exact position. Now you can keep pasting the keyframes until it fills up your timeline and it'll look something like this.

 

Secondary Movement

Now this looks ok, but there is an extra step you can take to give your animation a bit more life. We're going to add a little tuft of hair and animate that on a seperate layer. Click New Animation Folder and click New Animation Cel. Be sure to disable keyframes on the character layer just to make this process a little easier. Draw the hair and add a new animation cel. To make sure the hair flows in a uniform way, click the Enable Onion Skin button so you can easily trace the previous image. I wanted to get a bouncy effect as the character moves up and down, so I drew the hair tuft bouncing in five seperate drawings.

 

To edit the timing, select the frame from where it begins in the timeline and drag it to it's new position. Instead of drawing the same movement again, hold down the left mouse button and drag the cursor over the frames. Right click the first frame and click copy. Then right click the last frame and click paste. Do this as many times as it fits in the timeline and the movement will loop.

An added benefit when you colour the frames is that the colour will be copy + pasted too, so you don't have to colour every single frame. For example, this loop is 24 frames, but I only had to colour five drawings which saves a lot of time.

 

Speaking of timesaving with copy + pasting, you may have noticed a problem when I turn the keyframes back on the character layer. The character bounces but the hair stays in the same place. Luckily you don't have to manually place the keyframes on the hair layer. All you have to do is enable the keyframes on the hair layer, select the keyframes from the character layer, and paste them into the hair layer like this. And it'll automatically match the movement of the character.

 

Exporting your video

Now all that's left to do is to export your animation. Go to file > Export animation. Here are the two options I normally use, export as a GIF or as a Movie.

If the animation has no sound or is relatively short, GIF is the one I choose. If the animation is longer and has sound, I export as a movie. To export as a GIF, choose animated Gif, choose a file to save it and name it as you like. Then you'll get a settings box. For a looping gif, make sure the loop count is set to 'Unlimited'. As for the frame rate, you can set it to whatever you like for a GIF image. Experiment with this section to whatever look you like best. I'm sticking with 24 fps just for this example.

To export as a video, click Movie, choose a file to save it to, name it and you can save it as either an MP4 or an AVI file. I saved mine as an MP4. An export settings box will pop up. Although I haven't used any 2D camera effects in this tutorial, I like to keep that option checked just in case. I also keep the Width and Height the same. Regarding frame rate, when exporting a video, it's best to keep this at the same fps as you animated in. Say if you were animating in 12 frames per second, but you exported the video in 24 frames per second, it wouldn't export as you see it in the program and the timing would be off.

But if you want to change the frame rate in the program, go to Animation > Timeline > Change Frame Rate before you export as a video. Just make sure that both the frame rate in the program and the export settings are the exact same number.

 

Conclusion

And that's a wrap! I hope this video helped you understand Clip Studio's animation functions and that it inspired you to make some of your own. Have fun!