This animation is a limping walk-cycle made to loop, created in Maya and made for a college assignment, using a free-use rigged model from Cogswell College.
For this project, we were tasked to convey some emotion through a walk-cycle. I had already made incredibly basic walk-cycles in the past, however, those walk cycles were kept in place and never truly showcased a character emotion or personality. As such, I was excited to see what I could do here.
I decided to go for a more distressed, urgent tone, as if running away from a monster in a horror game while injured. Quite simply, I had never done anything like it before and wanted to give it a try. As this is more of a limp-cycle, instead of controlled steps and swinging arms, the character primarily moves with barely-controlled falls forward as the front leg drags the back leg behind it, with the arms behaving similarly. With each "step" forward, one foot stays in place while the rest of the body moves forward. The character takes a bigger step at first, which the rest of his body reacts to by bending accordingly and attempting to re-balance itself before he can fall over. The second step, much quicker and shorter, is part of the reaction to the recoil as he attempts to regain control. The third step is more controlled as he has regained his balance. All the while, his right arm holds his useless left arm, which flails along with the movement of the rest of his body.
The entire time, the character only looks ahead to where he's running, never bothering to look around and especially not behind him - he is entirely focused on escape and survival with his face frozen in a tense expression of terror. His eyes mostly move independently from the rest of his head and body as he attempts to always keep them forward, although they do need to follow when his body reacts to the recoil from his first step and fall.
The arms were difficult to pose as the character's hands have odd proportions, with much longer fingers than expected at first. Offsetting the motion was a slightly difficult task with many moving parts and an unorthodox pattern, although it fortunately did not take too long to get used to it and the frantic motion helped with the pacing.
While there is much room for improvement, I'd say this was a step in the right direction for attempting a more expressive walk-cycle. And yes, that pun was fully intentional.