THE WEALTH OF ANIME WALK CYCLES: Sprightly Ebata Walk And The Organic Overlapping Action!
At its core, a walk cycle is about the repetitive walking action of a character. This means that it is conditioned by joints and skeletons. So walk cycles gain in complexity the second more limbs are involved, like a spider or a horse — hence that one Shirobako reference with horse animation. Though we will mostly talk about human anatomy in the course of this article, for it is the most relevant dramatically when anime mostly features humans, that doesn’t mean we should ignore the endless possibilities of creature animation (especially with franchises with as rich an ecosystem as Pokémon).
Princess Mononoke (1997) was a memorable movie for audiences now and then alike, and a historical landmark in Ghibli cinematography. A certain creature running cycle, that of Nago in a divine form, is truly astounding for being an early manifestation of CGI at its most spectacular produced by a studio known for embodying cel conservatism. As we’ve seen in the 3DCG article, Yoshinori Sugano was contacted for this. What CGI permits in this scene is the animation of the divinity on 1’s, while the rest of the cast is timed on 2’s. This gives consequently more liveliness to the divine being. It reminds me of Animétudes discussing framerate modulation. Because it’s about a fish — a creature — in the cut, perhaps there’s coherency in setting a more natural liveliness apart by a different framerate.
“Then, in the end of the sequence, as the hurt fish frantically swims and writhes in pain, it’s animated on 1’s, which makes its speed and movement even more striking; in contrast, the next shot, where we see rocks detaching from the cliff, is on 3’s, which helps us realize the weight of the rocks that are about to fall down.”
Because of the full animation CGI permits on Princess Mononoke, and the chaotic nature of the patterns of tentacles, with a time lag for the rest of the cast, the result may be a distinct feeling of overlapping action at the level of the entire frame. In Timing for Animation (1981. Harold Whitaker, John Halas, Tom Sito), it is discussed: “It is usually a good idea in animation to have a time lag between the movements of different parts of the figure. This is called ‘overlapping action’ […] In a more violent movement it helps to give fluidity.”
Overlapping action, suggesting motion in various parts of the body, means there is a sense of wholeness to the organism being depicted, a kind of raw and lively organicity that is successfully identified as life-like (whether mechanical or biological, for instance with a stiffness in volume or squash and stretch). And you can find exaggerated overlapping action as a very distinctive part of the style of a famous Japanese animator, Ryouma Ebata. His style of character acting is also called Ebata Walk, and we can find a greater sense of bodily engagement within it thanks to the exaggerated walk cycle extremes. They also cause greater, and therefore more distinctive motions belonging to overlapping action, like clothing fabrics or swaying hair. In the Absolute Duo opening, the Ebata Walk for Julie Sigtuna also has framerate modulation, being at times animated on 2’s and other times on 3's.
And it also feels like contrapposto, a slight asymmetry in the human figure, between the line of arms and shoulders contrasting in balancing with those of the hips and legs, is an important component in the Ebata Walk — at least in the first few cuts? As in, the overlapping action has the torso leading its own action, incarnating its own will in a more meaningful manner as the head is there. This organicity caused by overlapping action and great, clearcut extremes in a walk cycle are reminding me of a recent popular anime series. Lycoris Recoil (2022) made huge waves, and I remember that walk cycle being great. The sway of her short haircut, the ribbon, and especially the extremes reached by the arms confer to Chisato a great sense of energy. And the fact she looks in the direction of the viewer is dramatically charged, with the head leading the action and subjectivity shining through, with a lively confidence.
Mitsuo Iso, a veteran animator with a 40-year-long career in the industry as an animator and anime director, recently talked about a technique he developed in the course of his long experience to make a better use of framerate modulation, in conveying weight and motion through overlapping action. Translation by Full Frontal: “The upper and lower body can create separate vectors of movement. When running, you don’t simply use your leg muscles to lift your lower body: the upper body is also being lifted by the up-and-down swinging of the arms. You can’t convey that with only 2 frames. I never heard about this from anyone, though, because back then only this “limited running” with 2 frames was passed down”
To sum up, in this short article we have taken a glance at the walk cycle, a very basic animation reality but being able to take on many more forms through variation. After all, it’s up to the animator to turn biomechanics to personality. We have first mentioned Princess Mononoke, to explain how a running cycle by a creature can greatly overwhelm the viewership in liveliness. Framerate modulation and overlapping action can both be determining factors in animating liveliness, but we focused on the latter in human walk cycles. The Ebata Walk is a rather interesting term in the sakuga community, because it identifies Ryouma Ebata’s character animation as particular. I believe it to have at its core exaggerated extremes, overlapping action, and possibly contrapposto — the latter conveying dynamism to the individual frame, the others organicity through animation. And an animator like Mitsuo Iso also invites us to think of the running cycle with more complexity, with the swinging of the arms lefting the upper body — as in the subjectivity leading the action? All in all, walk cycles are templates that can magnify the figuration of protagonists in character-driven shows, and that’s why we have focused on openings and the climactic part of a movie to capture the riches it suggests.
