11 things I learned from animating 100 walk cycles

When I did my 100 walk cycle animation challenge I learned a few things about animation, but also about self motivation and life in general. If you want to read about my journey how I did the 100 days of walk cycles, then head over here: How to revive your dreams of artistic expression

So let's start with the things I learned:

1. Don't break the chain.

Discipline is important, if you stop one day without a legitimate reason, you WILL start degrading and slacking off. Keep doing one small thing towards your goal every day and you can achieve anything!

2. Planning increases quality, focus & delivery time

Planning in animation is key. Animation is like a game of “Whisper down the lane” or “Stille Post” (in German). When you start out without some guides your last frame will have other proportions. Even in short animations when you don’t plan your walk cycle accordingly you are going to end up with something different. But that’s part of the fun sometimes!

Also if you don't plan your animation from start to finish. Starting with the most important key positions it will take you longer in the end to figure out and tweak the timing, proportions and other things.

3. Principles of animation.

I learned a lot about the basics of animations - about timing, spacing, squash & stretch, bounce, anticipation, you name it. I already found use cases where I can apply this knowledge in my current line of work, in web animations for example. If you have further interest in web animation, I can recommend you the Web Animation Weekly newsletter by Rachel Nabors and the slack community created by her.

^{Something I made with HTML & CSS}

4. Time Limits are good.

It forces you to finish something. Finishing something makes you happy.

5. It's okay to be bad.

Take a step back, and try to see the fun side. Don't always focus on the result, try to appreciate what's good and what you learned. Maybe you just had a bad day. But you made something.

6. Appreciation for the art form.

I can appreciate animation even more now, especially frame by frame, traditional animation and also stop-motion animation.

7. 100 day challenges can be long.

At least if you break the chain. You can pick an arbitrary number of days actually. I also tried a 30 day challenge once. Those can be as effective. If you want a habit that sticks forever, you don’t need a challenge for it.

8. There’s always more to learn (and never enough time)

I still have to get better at perspective drawing, figure drawing, special effects drawing like water splashes or fire, landscape and background animations, and so on!

9. People will approach you.

When you do something long enough people will want to collaborate with you. Ask you for advice. So if you have a dream of doing something, stop procrastinating and start doing it for a week, a month or 100 days.

10. Your self confidence will grow

If you already did something like this, you will know the power of taking small steps to achieve bigger goals. Nothing will seem impossible to you anymore. Everything starts and ends with a small step!

11. A habit is easy to establish, but also easy to lose

That goes hand in hand with Don't break the chain. It is easy to pick up a habit and do it for 30 days, but it's hard to keep it up forever. Because once you stop doing it for a few days it stops being a habit, and you have to force yourself to do it.

I think I learned even more things. For example I believe there's an infinite amount of walk cycles you can animate and 100 of them doesn't even scratch the surface.

Did you ever participate in a 100 day challenge? What did you learn? (Answer in the comments)