You may be surprised by just how far I have Walks and Runs down the list of things to study. It is a common misconception that walks and runs are a good beginners exercise. They are much harder to execute than you might think. Why? Well because to get a walk right you need to correctly execute almost every single animation principle there is. Bringing everything together in harmony in one short scene. Because of this I believe that walks in particular are better for doing near the end of your studies, when you have drilled yourself on all the basic principles and are ready to take it to the next level.
So before reading on maybe you need to ask yourself if your ready to be here yet. If you haven't already done so you may be better off doing a short and well executed action scene like a jump, kick or weight lift. If you can do those sorts of scenes well then I think you will be able to get much more out of these exercises and tutorials.
LINKS:
A comprehensive breakdown on animating a walk with examples from Dermot O'Conner
Notes on walking with lots of animated examples.
Notes on animating a convincing walk.
In this article Shawn Kelly talks about positioning the characters weight during a walk.
Cameron Fielding talks about the importance of pushing off with the back foot during a walk.
Jason Ryan's Video tutorial on animating a sneek. (If asked for a password type: JRA)
Angie Jones and Jamie Oliff have some great advice on animating walks on the Thinking Animation web site and the Thinking Animation blog.
Dermot from Idleworm talks us through how he animates a walk cycle in Flash.
The Bio Motion Labs Walker lets you study the motion of different walks of different sex, attitude and weight from different angles, they have a Runner too
Jason is a Dreamworks animator and in this post you can watch a timelaps screen capture of him animating a walk cycle.
A nice simple, concise and clear walk tutorial from Mike Brown.
