Walking Bear in After Effects

Animation in After Effects - Walk Cycle

This short video is of a bear walking. I created this in Adobe After effects. In order create this effect, I had different parts of a bear made in Photoshop; Head, two Arms, two Legs and a Body, all in different layer in photoshop. 

I then opened each part of the bear on a new composition in After Effects; I then began to move the bears legs; on one leg I use the pin point tool to change the position of the leg at different points. I then used multiple keyframes, in order for the bears legs to move. Once that was completed, I copied the key frames into the layer of the other leg, and just changer the position of the keyframes, so that the legs would move alternately.

I performed a similar operation on the arms, using the pin point tool and keyframes to get the arms moving backwards and forwards alternately. In order for the movement of the bear to look natural, the movement of the arms and legs had to look natural.

I also had to make the bears head bob up and down whenever it had a bent leg. His boy would also move back and forth in order to make the movement of the bear as natural as possible.

This is an example of a walk cycle.