This week, I began to sink my teeth into the intricacies of the run cycle. I have performed a walk cycle in the past (a rather energetic one at that), so I figured it wouldn't be so terribly different. It turns out, there are several marked differences, as well as a different overall feel. So, I'm going to outline a few of the things that stand out to me as important about the run cycle.
For starters, and as Muybridge proved with horses, a character that is running will have all (both, in the case of humans) its feet off of the ground at some point during the cycle. You could think of a humanoid run cycle as a series of leaps and bounds through the air. This gives a more frantic, energetic feel to the motion as opposed to the walk cycle, in which the character is never airborne. This guy is at the point in the air just before landing:
Another thing, the faster the character runs, the further forward he or she will lean. The above businessman, while also being restricted by his suit, probably isn't running all that fast. Someone who is really blasting off like this, however,
will have a much more dramatic tilt to the torso. This guy seems like he's just about to launch off the ground, he's leaning forward so far. This steep an angle is only really found in a full-on sprint, however, so this was a bit of an extreme example.
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